


Switching Places

by FelineJaye



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (but not the typical adult dapper one if that helps), (or there will be in future chapters with luck), Alternate Universe - Permabipper, Alternate Version of the Permabipper AU, Canon Compliant up until The Stanchurian Candidate, Gen, Human!Bill, I'm kinda writing this as I go okay, Mabel being great as usual, Sadism, The Mindscape, Violence, demon!dipper, more tags will probably be added later
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 23:33:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 34,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5183909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FelineJaye/pseuds/FelineJaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Through a series of magical mishaps, Dipper ends up transformed into a dream demon and Bill ends up stuck in a human form. But the Mystery Shack crew is there to help the two of them get through these strange transformations! With their combined skills they're sure to set things right again! Right? Right!?</p><p>Except there's a really big difference between Bill possessing a body and Bill literally being a human body. And Dipper is laughing a little too hard when people accidentally hurt themselves. And Ford isn't sure he wants to 'fix' things - even though he's less and less sure he can trust this new Dipper. And Stan feels like he's sinking faster than he's swimming.</p><p>And Mabel is learning just how far she'll go for her brother.</p><p>HIATUS - still got the outline for it, still want it finished, just got busy. Don't hold your breath, basically.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Set-Up

"Sure, sure, your parents won't care about your failing grade. Trust me - I gotta keep up my end of deals, kiddo! Now just these last few words. Sound 'em out in your head - yeah they're Latin, you got a good eye kid! Ever think about- ah ha ha, well! That won't matter soon anyway now will it? Don't worry your little head about that, just say the words and you'll have finished up your end of the deal. And then I'll keep up my end." 

An hour or two ago, in the suburbia of Twin Falls, Idaho, a child had come home to an empty house and had locked themselves inside their room to try (yet fail) to not cry over their latest assignment. Summer school was no fun at the best of times and it was even worse when you were somehow failing that too. They couldn't let their parents find out.

They were failing because the only math they wanted to learn was what they needed for magic. Black magic. And that kind of magic didn't need all that algebra nonsense. Miserable, they'd sat at their desk with their computer flicking between an assortment of satanic-looking screensavers. They knew that there was one solution to all this. Summon something, some demon. Make a deal and change reality. Change their grades or make them smarter or something.

So the child had looked through websites, looked through their books and had gone down into the basement to draw a summoning circle and conjure a demon. It was a dream demon, so they figured it should have the power to make their dreams come true. And to erase all their nightmares.

Bill Cipher was not what the kid thought it would be. It was this small and almost comical triangle, with a jaunty little bowtie and top hat. But the the squeaky demon heard them out and offered a deal. They just had to do one little ritual for the demon and in exchange their parents would never care about any of their grades ever again. It sounded perfect and the child had sealed the deal with a handshake in blue flames.

So they'd scrubbed out the original summoning wheel and had drawn a new diagram according to Cipher's specifications. It was mostly a circle, but with Latin and glyphs drawn around it. They had an old parchment page of Latin to read out while they stood in the centre of the circle. Soon, everything would be over and school would never be a problem ever again.

It occurred to the child, only as the last syllable left their mouth and they felt a burning energy smoldering their very atoms, that their parents wouldn't care about their grades if they were too busy grieving over and burying their child's body.

 

* * *

 

Expert from Journal 2;

_I have learnt that he is a being of the mind. A being of pure energy that should not be able to exist in our reality without first taking a host. I theorise that there are a few exceptions to this; indeed his summoning ritual is the most obvious. For a brief period of time and space, the mindscape and reality can coexist. This is the first action that his summoning ritual takes - preparing a small area where reality and mindscape meld into one. I have yet to figure out how to extend this effect - either in the dimension of time or the dimension of space. (See notes 3.2.5.) I do know that this melding of realities is an effect Bill himself can create, given the right circumstances._

_I also believe that there is one more way that he might be able to exist in this reality without a host, though again it is not a permanent solution. With enough power to fuel it, it should be possible to transpose any being with a soul and himself. Though it would leave someone physically in the mindscape (inadvisable), it does mean that he would be able to physically manifest in our reality. I do not know how long such a switch would remain, however. I will consult with Bill on this and see how he might inspire me further._

 

* * *

 

Halfway through racing out of the Mystery Shack with Mabel, Dipper stumbled, clutching his chest. His sister was by his side in an instant, each grunkle hovering with concern from opposite ends of the room. He groaned and began to ask what had happened before there was a flash of light from where his body was.

Everyone covered their eyes and in the next instance Bill filled the space. With a manical laugh, he too disappeared in a flash of light.

 

* * *

 

Dipper opened his eyes.

He was floating above a forest, as usual. The sky was a clear and soft pink above him and the sun shone brightly. He felt ill-at-ease. The ground was above him, no, under him, now instead of the sky. It grew closer and closer, sharp rocks from the cliff face pointed up at him and spelling fear.

And that was why he was running. Because the fear was coming and it couldn't catch him and-

Dipper closed an eye.

The running stopped and the trees around him fell flat - 2D and knocked down by a gentle tap. He was dreaming, but it was not his dream. It was 200 million people's dream but it was not his own.

"Oh no." he whispered to himself as he realised where he was trapped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you know that in the state just next to Oregon (where Gravity Falls is meant to be) there's a real life genuine town called 'Twin Falls'? Like Gravity Falls and Twin Peaks didn't already have enough parallels.
> 
> Thanks to samirows on tumblr for starting the "Permabipper AU" idea and thanks to crepusclarity on tumblr for this [/post/100085119015/] post which inspired me to actually start writing this. This isn't really a Permabipper fic, but it is admittedly pretty darn close & it was inspired by Permabipper fanart so... Yes.
> 
> So for the record, I don't usually like human!Bill so I hope my version is a welcome departure from how he normal gets 'humanised'. But I do like demon!Dipper a lot so... yeah I'll be filling in more violence-related tags as I write more of him.
> 
> Please tell me if this was as disjointed as I think it is. I just needed to lay the ground work for the rest of the fic. I'll post Chapter 1 tomorrow if I have time before work. Otherwise... ??? Who knows. In the next few days, I guess.
> 
> EDIT: Fun fact this is no longer a 'prologue' because I got sick of AO3's auto-numbering and decided to roll with it. For reasons! Basically.


	2. Mabel Has a Plan

Mabel wished she'd spent more time actually paying attention when Dipper and Grunkle Ford talked nerd with each other. It would make this whole thing a lot easier, she was sure. As it was, most of what she was reading was Greek to her which was a problem because she was pretty sure it was meant to be Latin. She tipped her head back and let out a large groan to the ceiling, letting the book slip down.

Grunkle Ford had told her not to worry about it. Which was a ridiculous request, obviously, and she'd bugged him every way she knew how until he'd given up more details on _what the heck just happened_. It turns out, by his 'rough hypothesis' (which turned out to just mean 'guess', no wonder no one understood these brainy types), Bill Cipher had someone managed to find a way to switch places with Dipper. Which meant that Bill could exist in reality. But even worse was that for every minute that Bill was in their world, Dipper was trapped in the Mindscape. Grunkle Ford had trailed off at that point, leaving Mabel suspicious that he'd been about to say something even worse about Dipper's entrapment.

But he'd just put on a confident face, gave her a somewhat patronising smile and told her not to worry about it - he'd get Dipper back in no time.

That had been almost a week ago.

At first, Mabel had been content to trust in her scientific great uncle. He had a lot of experience in these kinds of things after all. She'd asked each night at dinner when Dipper was coming home. But Ford didn't have an answer for her either of the first two nights and didn't even come upstairs to dinner the third night. When she'd cornered him down in the basement, a plate of tepid food as bait and her raw determination as the trap, he'd looked ragged and tired. He confessed that he'd still made no progress in finding a way to bring Dipper back. But as he attempted to assure her once more that he would find a way, she saw at least that Dipper being missing was eating him up almost as much as it was eating her up.

But just because Grunkle Ford had his heart in the right place didn't mean she was going to leave it all up to him. It was her twin that was missing and she was going to do everything she could to bring him back.

Which would be a lot simpler if she could understand all this paranormal jargon written in Grunkle Ford's journals and the printouts she'd gotten from the library. Mabel thought she had most of a ritual figured out. After having gone through the Journals, she'd figured out that just doing a 'switching places' ritual again should work. She guessed. All she needed to do was get Bill Cipher, recite some Latin mumbo-jumbo and somehow give enough power to the ritual. She had parts one and two sorted out - Grunkle Ford had confirmed that Bill's summoning circle would still summon him from where ever he was in reality and she'd translated and printed out the Latin she needed to say. It was the power source that was now stumping her.

She would have to go out into the forest and find something. That is, if she couldn't find something down in Grunkle Ford's lab. Pushing the book onto her bed, she hopped off of the mattress and spared a wistful look at Dipper's side of the room. She hadn't touched a thing but the state of stasis was becoming more and more depressing to look at. They'd never been apart for so long before and Mabel wasn't sure what she'd do if they remained apart for much longer. She trudged out of the attic and down the many stairs until she was in the gift shop.

Grunkle Stan was at the door, casting an afternoon shadow as he flipped the closed sign on the door. He turned as she entered, a concerned frown on his face for just a second before he forced himself to look happier.

"Hey kiddo! I was just closing up shop. How about you and me see if we can make a whole ice-cream cone out of free samples downtown?"

She had to smile at the attempt. Even if his support was unconventional, she could always trust Grunkle Stan to be there to make her feel better. It made her feel a little bad that she had to turn him down - to go see his brother, of all reasons.

"Actually... I was going to go ask Grunkle Ford something. Maybe later?"

Mabel winced internally at the downcast look her great uncle tried to cover up. He abruptly turned back to the door.

"Sure sweetie. Have fun talking nerd or whatever."

She sighed softly and turned to the vending machine. She wished she could get her brother back without hurting other people in the process. She reached up and keyed in the code, allowing the vending machine to swing open. But before she could go inside, Stan spoke again.

"Hey Mabel."

She half turned towards him. His face had a peculiar look about it.

"Good luck. If anyone can do this, it's you."

This time her grin was quite sincere. "Oh you~ You do care!" she half-giggled, flipping a faux-modest hand at him. And she took particular delight in slamming the hidden door shut just as Stan was attempting to protest his empathy. She kept that sincere smile all the way down into the basement labs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact this was meant to be the first three chapters. But then I wrote this much, though it looked like a lot and learnt I'd written SO MANY words.
> 
> Also, testing the idea of Chapter names. Unsure if I'll keep 'em.


	3. The Ritual

The lab was never quiet, not that Mabel had really been down here enough times to make a judgement call on that. But the few times she had it hadn't been quiet. Giant, out-dated computers constantly whirred away. Experiments dripped. Her other grunkle muttered, the words echoing into an intelligible mess. She walked through the corridor, her shoes quiet under the hum-drum. Turning a corner, she found him hunched over a table.

"Hi Grunkle Ford!" she chirped, not looking at whom she addressed but choosing instead to peer around the room.

Her great uncle jolted in his seat before spinning around and half standing. He froze when he saw her, then each muscle seemed to relax independent of one another until he was calmly seated. His voice was strained when he spoke.

"Mabel." there was an awkward pause. Awkward seemed to be the only kind of pause they could have together, much to Mabel's lament, "What, ah, what are you doing here?"

"Oh, you know... Just seeing how my favourite grunkle is doing." She strolled about, looking at the various shelves.

Stanford looked unconvinced; "I'm your favourite? What did Stanley do to loose that... honour?"

She turned with a scoff and a grin, "Pfft - he didn't do anything, silly! You two are tied! Both get first place for best grunkle a girl could hope for."

His unimpressed expression remained unchanged, if not slightly bemused, "I see."

Mabel continued around the room, occasionally poking things and providing her own sound-effects. She could feel Ford's eyes on her, observing her as she observed his workspace. Nothing stood out to her as something she could use as a power source. Rituals - especially demony-mindscape rituals - often needed a sacrifice and since she wanted to forcibly move a dream demon, she didn't really doubt the claims that she'd need something like a human sacrifice. Hopefully without actually killing a person. Hopefully. Who knows! But she wanted to exhaust her options before it came down to her brother or someone else's life.

"Was there something you wanted?"

Mabel tipped her head around to face her grunkle's frustrated question. The large desk at which he sat had shelves upon shelves built on top of it, many mysterious objects sitting on them. A large board stood off to one side - it reminded her of Dipper's many 'Mystery Solving Boards'. There was photos and pictures tacked on it, words written sporadically and string tied so as to connect ideas to each other. At the centre of the board was a familiar pine tree pictogram. She walked closer, drawn to it. Mabel's eyes sadly slide from the board, looking at his desk in the hopes of distracting herself. Up on tip-toes, she looked at the papers on his desk.

"Whatcha working on, anyway?"

She looked up as he grunted in reply, a little shocked at the angry expression on his face.

"I'm **working** on getting Dipper back, of course. That's **all** I'm working on. I haven't been slacking off or dilly-dallying about down here. I've been working on-" he swivelled around, looking away from her. "If you've just come down here to criticise, then do your brother a favour and keep quiet about it. I have work to do and I don't need you distracting me."

She stepped back, upset at his behaviour, her behaviour and that Dipper was missing in the first place. She frowned and crossed her arms, looking down and away as she pronounced; "Well someone's a mister grumpypants today."

A glow caught her eye and she unfolded her arms to follow her line of sight. She walked down to the other end of the room and crouched until she could see what was emitting the glow. It was a large specimen tube, maybe twice the height of her own hand, and within it was a cartoony-looking heart glowing a bright red.

"Oooooo~" she cooed, gently tapping the tube, "Now you are too pretty to sit down here on this dusty floor-shelf. Lemme just..." She carefully pulled the tube out from between a dead potted flower and stone with a strange glyph carved into it. She lifted it up high, feeling a sense of triumph. Something about the glow of the heart...

Mabel returned to her grunkle's desk.

"Hey-oo!" she waited until he'd finished with his small freak out before putting the tube down on the edge of his desk. "So what's this thing anyway? Is it one of those creepy memory tubes from those Blind Eye people? Is it full of romantic memories and that's why it has a heart in it? Is it, is it, is it!?"

Ford, failing to meet her enthusiasm, barely glanced at it but answered anyway. "Oh, that. It's a soul essence. I got that from an interesting being when-" He looked up to give her an annoyed look and a dismissive scoff, "Nevermind. What did I say about distracting me?"

Mabel, however, wasn't put out by his tone. She was barely listening. She'd heard the word _soul_ and that was good enough for her. Because if this was a soul, then it should be enough to power the ritual she'd cobbled together. But then again, if it was **someone's** soul... She wanted Dipper back but she wasn't sure what she'd sacrifice to make that happen. Fiddling with the rim of the tube, she asked;

"So... Would you say that this was be, like, the same amount of power as... say... a life? And also does that mean that someone's trapped in here? Are you gonna give them back their body later or are they just kinda trapped there forever as an admittedly adorable puffy heart?"

"Ha, oh no no. Even if it was determined enough to survive out of that tube - which I doubt - there's no way to save it and restore its body. Not in this dimension. It's just a keepsake - something to research in my spare time. When I haven't got more important things to be doing."

"And...?" she prompted him, now holding the tube and vaguely vibrating with anticipation.

"And what?"

"And does it have the same amount of power as a human life? Uh, for example."

"Oh yes, yes. It certainly would. Now, Mabel, I really do need to concentrate. So would you mind-"

But as Ford swivelled in his chair to finish addressing her, he found his grand niece already racing out of the basement, rapidly giving her farewells;

"Thanks Grunkle Ford! I'll just be upstairs now don't worry nothing suspicious going on ah ha ha bye!"

With a confused and mildly suspect look, he shrugged off his younger relatives antics and turned back to his research. He'd prove that he could get Dipper back from the Nightmare Realm if it was the last thing he did. And it wouldn't be.

Out of the basement, in the gift shop, Mabel stared at the tube cradled in her hands. She was going to do it. She was finally going to get her brother back. She secured the tube under one arm and confidently walked back up to the attic. Now all she had to do was set up the ritual, set up Bill's summoning circle and...

And she'd bring her brother home.

* * *

 

Back in her room, she set up the ritual. She had print-outs spread over her bed describing the ritual she'd come up with. The whole thing was a combination of various sources; the internet, Grunkle Ford's journals and even a few books she'd managed to 'borrow' from him. Mabel cleared off the floor and drew a circle between their beds - she'd draw Cipher's summoning circle later. It felt like tempting fate to draw it before the main ritual was set up.

Honestly, she didn't even know if he'd hang around long enough for her to finish this ritual. She didn't have one of those fancy binding circles she had his summoning circle. She was mostly betting on Cipher humouring her, her saying the ritual fast enough and sheer sisterly love to pull this off. Admittedly, it was not the best plan she'd ever had. But this wasn't her area of expertise. This wasn't something she could grapple-hook, it wasn't something she could strike at. It wasn't a problem she could hug out or she could solve with a well-placed sticker.

This was Dipper's domain.

And that was the problem. She needed Dipper here and no one else was making any headway in bringing him back. So her solution may be imperfect and running on 20% more luck than anything else - but at least she had a solution. Shaking away her last lingering doubts, she stood up from the circular diagram drawn on the floor.

The main part of the diagram was a large circle that was encompassing two smaller circles - one with a picture of her brother and one with a picture of the demon who'd shoved him into the mindscape. Around the edges of each circle was a set of symbols she only kinda recognised and certainly didn't understand. But the books and websites she'd read had agreed that they'd help either anchor (in the case of the small circles) or power (in the case of the larger circle) the ritual. On the line of the larger circle, she'd placed seven candles at regular intervals - they were decorative candles, but it wasn't like any of the sources said they had to be real actual wax candles. So what if she used a bit of battery power. They still flickered ominously.

Mabel frowned at the set up. She could barely admit it to herself, lest she jinx her attempt, but she wasn't confident in what she was about to do. She just didn't see what choice she had. It's not like she was going to **not** try and bring Dipper back. So she had to. She returned to her bed and pushed all her research out of the way until she found what she needed. On one piece of paper she had the ritual's magic words, printed out courtesy of the library. She also grabbed the second of Grunkle Ford's journals, which had the details on the various ways to summon Bill Cipher.

She shoved the piece of paper into her pocket and knelt down once more, laying the journal open beside her. She drew the summoning circle and a pictogram of Bill in the centre (since the summoning didn't actually have anyone as it's target). After finishing the circle, she closed the journal and gently kicked it under her bed. Standing outside of the entire diagram, she drew in a deep breath and spoke the words to summon Bill and put an end to this once and for all.

" _Triangulum, entangulum. Meteforis dominus ventium. Meteforis venetisarium_!"

Mabel felt her eyes fall shut without loosing a second of vision and watched as the room drained of colour.

"Well, well, now isn't this a surprise," Bill had appeared in a flash of darkness, "Or not a surprise, exactly. Nothing a surprise when you're a multi-millennial omniscient being!" he zoomed up to Mabel, stopping before the edge of the circle, "So! What can I do for you, Shooting Star? Are you missing a certain someone~?"

He rotated around as he teased and she narrowed her eyes angrily. "Yeah, well, he won't be missing for much longer!"

"You don't say? And what exactly are you gonna do about? Oh! Shooting Star; that's scandalous - don't tell me you wanna make a Deal? I mean, I **could** get him back for you. If- "

"Are you kidding me? You're the one who got him in trouble in the first place! Argh! Why am I even talking to you!"

Standing strong, Mabel pulled out the paper with the ritual words she'd figured out on it. She hadn't been able to find a pre-made ritual that did what she needed but all her sources had said that Latin was a language for magic so she'd tried writing in Latin, following the basic structure and guidelines that she'd found in the journals and other books.

" _Magiae regno_."

Bill's laughter reverberated. "Wow! That's quite the claim, kid."

Undeterred if not a little louder, she continued; " _Hanc magiam impello_."

He laughed again, the sound grating on her already frayed nerves. "Do you now?" He looked away from her, drifting off to float around the circumference of the summoning circle, "So that's what all this stuff's for - you're gonna just try reverse it all by yourself."

He zapped back to in front of her, "Well that's just swell!" he flickered into a searing red image of himself on the last word, the image capturing her attention and fear before he flickered back to his usual yellow form. Gesticulating, he continued; "I mean you - you, Shooting Star! You dabbling in magic that you can't possibly comprehend? That's just rich. I mean if you were Pine Tree or Sixer standing there doing this well - well I might have to just up and leave. But, yeah, oh sure, this is going to turn out well."

He levitated upwards, reclining with his arms folded behind his apex. "In fact, you know what? I think I'm actually gonna stick around, just to watch you fall. Come on, Shooting Star, chop-chop! I haven't got all day: people to meet, plans to finish. Let's see what you got!"

Mabel hadn't stopped chanting the two sentences over and over, despite Bill's jabs at her ego and confidence. This would work. This had to work. The attic's air faintly crackled now, so something magical must've been happening. The three ritual circles cast an ethereal glow that seemed to shine just as bright as the daylight but without overpowering it. The dream demon's laughter filled her ears, taunting her every sloppy syllable of the dead language.

" _Hanc magium impello_! _Permuta status hominis et numinis mali_!" she continued, gesturing to the two pictures she had of Dipper and Bill contained in the circles.

Bill's laughter stopped dead partway through her sentence. "Wait- what?"

Heedless of his distractions, she continued the ritual; " _Maiga_ -"

But he continued to interrupt as she spoke; "No, what did you say?! That wasn't-"

"- _mero verbo_ -"

"-the right word!"

"- _parabit_!"

"No!" he screeched as he grew into his more demonic-looking red-and-black form.

" _Magia meo_ -"

Bill spun around the circle frantically, clearly trying to leave. But the ritual circle crackled and zapped with bright pink energy every time he came into contact with the circle's edge. Each rebuff seemed to just make the demon more frantic and more enraged.

"- _verbo parabit_!"

"No, no! Stop it! Stop it! You're doing it wrong, you're going to ruin **everything**! "

" _Magia meo ver_ -"

He floated up to face her - his twisted expression meeting her angrily determined one. In a deep reverb tone, he threatened; "You don't know what you're doing. If you continue this you will loose your precious Pine Tree as you know and love him **forever**! "

"- _bo parabit! **Pare!**_ "

" **No!!!** " Bill screamed as the circle blasted full of searing white light.

Mabel stood, panting and shaking, and waited for the results of her spell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliff hanger, because drama. As you can see, I was having fun with AO3's style formatting in this chapter. I'm liking the serif + small caps combination for the Demonic voice. (And yes, that is a homeage to a certain cat-loving character from an entirely different series). Speaking of homages, a gold star sticker to whomever figures out where I got inspiration from for the Soul Tube thingy.
> 
> Next chapter we find out what the ritual did! I bet you can guess, though «heh heh» But there's probably only one person who can guess why the ritual did what it did. Speaking of...
> 
> Big thanks to fellow AO3 author Freqout for the Latin translation! Freqout was so very helpful, and very patient with my peculiar translation requests. Freqout also has a fantastic demon!Dipper fic that's currently 12 chapters in called Resurrection \- if you're reading this you'll probably like that too.
> 
> The art, however, is by me! Well, the background is a screencap. But the Mabel was all me :3 Yes I am actually a little proud of my work, okay. I've been practising hard and deserve to shed some humility about my skills.


	4. Dipper Does Not

Dipper was not sure how long he'd been in the Dreamscape. He had, at least, figured out that that was where he definitely was. It wasn't hard to figure out, once he'd figured out how to remain lucid. The entire realm he floated through acted just like every dream he recalled and like every dream he'd read about. Time was significantly more abstract - every rule he took for granted on Earth was an abstract concept here. The only true rule or law was one's own thoughts - and even then, only lucid minds had any sense of control.

It had taken what felt like a while to become lucid. He had vague memories of drifting in and out of conciousness - knowing that the world around him was a dream and then suddenly not knowing. He'd figured out that the world was always more lucid if he only had one eye open, which had lent evidence that the world was the Dreamscape. Conspiracy-like evidence, but that was good enough for Dipper. Once he was lucid, it was easy to see the realm for what it was. He found it difficult to describe, even just to himself, but his best estimation was like seeing an x-ray of the world. He could see the house and the clouds and the monsters but at the same time, when he was lucid, he could see the thoughts and emotions that had come together to make the appearance of a house and clouds and monsters. He could see the Longing and the Fear and the Dread and the Joy and the Memory and the entire psyches of the people who where dreaming.

He suspected it had been more than a day or two in the real, waking world. He could only guess at that, what with time being an abstract concept and there being no solid day or night. But it had been long enough for the percentage of chance to introduce him to a lucid dreamer, so he was guessing it had been a day or two.

That had been interesting and enlightening. The lucid dreamer hadn't been able to tell Dipper their name, though had reassuringly repeated Dipper's nickname back at him. They'd passed on a few tips for remaining lucid in the Dreamscape and the two of them had talked about their experiences there. Unfortunately, the conversation had cut short when the dreamer had asked Dipper how he'd come to be there, if he wasn't a lucid dreamer himself. Dipper had said that he suspected a dream demon had brought him to this realm and the lucid dreamer had effectively laughed him off. Had said that the higher plane didn't have demons. Their tune had changed rather swiftly when Dipper had mentioned Bill by name and the dreamer had suddenly blinked out of the Dreamscape.

He'd gotten used to the set up, for the most part. it was like being on a boat - constantly nauseous and eternally nebulous. The only constant was that nothing was stable. He found himself drifting into people's nightmares most often and would have to concentrate to move into people's sweeter dreams. He learnt, sometime after the lucid dreamer, that the Dreamscape had no way of censoring itself. He'd learnt this by wandering into a very happy feeling dream of a housewife - a dream that had him backpedalling fast with a feeling of 'wrong' crawling over his non-existent body. For the first time in his life, he was glad that Mabel's friends had already introduced him to their 'age-inappropriate romance novels'.

Though he now mostly had the landscape under control - as much as any mortal could, anyway - his body was another thing altogether. Most consistently, he seemed to exist similar to the way he had when Bill had possessed his body. He wasn't faded out and couldn't shove his hand inside of himself any more but he seemed untethered by gravity and his tangibility seemed to only extend to himself. He wasn't sure if those two qualities where thanks to the Dreamscape or not. The problem was, he didn't always appear as such. Or rather, he suspected that sometimes he didn't exist at all. It was a strange sensation, because the moment he thought of his body even if it was to think "I **don't** have a body" his body would materialise. So his suspicions where something he noticed like a shape in the blind spot of his peripherals. When he wasn't ceasing to exist or existing as some semi-real apparition, his body seemed to meld to match whatever dream he was in. He found himself sometimes feeling distinctly 'anime' or as if he was made of clay. Sometimes he was a different animal and sometimes he suspected he was from a TV show or a film. It didn't happen all the time but sometimes when he wasn't paying too much attention to his body the dream would just reach in and move the very concept of who and what he was around until he better suited the dream. He tended to give into the manipulation, mostly because when he didn't it felt like thousands of eyes would be instantly watching his every movement and the owner of the dream would soon find him and question why he was there in a frightened tone.

Dipper just wished they didn't sound so frightened.

He felt useless. He should be trying to find some way back home, back to the Mystery Shack. He bet that Grunkle Ford hadn't been sitting around complacently, just waiting for Grunkle Stan to pull him back. Heck - Ford hadn't even wanted the portal turned back on again, so he had to have been trying some alternate methods. But Dipper found himself drawing a blank whenever he tried to think of a way back. He seemed to be wearing his actual clothes including whatever had been contained inside of them. He was mildly alarmed at having a physical copy of the third journal on him, but he supposed that it would stay safe as long as no demons came looking for him while he was trapped here. But the journal mostly detailed phenomena around Gravity Falls, Earth. The pages on Bill Cipher gave a bit of information, but not enough to get him out of the realm. And having that picture of the demon open gave him a bad feeling. He didn't know what to do but worse he didn't know where to even start. So he just concentrated on staying in one piece and trusted that Grunkle Ford would find a way to bring him home. Because he knew his grunkle would bring him back - not just because he trusted that his grunkle was smart enough but because he knew that Mabel was there too. And Mabel wouldn't let anyone rest until he was back home, safe. Just like he wouldn't rest if Mabel had been in danger.

After a day - or had it been a month? - in the Dreamscape, something finally changed.

Dipper stood in someone's dream, being a mere background bystander at some kind of public luncheon attended by humans and bears alike. He held a can of drink in one hand and watched the unfolding dream with one eye, the other tightly closed. A feeling of ease settled over him and he looked down at the arm holding his drink, only to find a monochrome fire eating away at his flesh. Still bizarrely calm, he looked up his arm and over the rest of his body, only to find that the rest of him was covered in this liquid-esque flame. It felt like burning all over his skin but he got the impression that it was somehow growing instead. The more he stared the more he saw - like an optical illusion that continuously expanded over and over. He felt like he could see the electrons in his atoms swirling and changing and splitting. He felt like he could see each electron flitting around clusters of protons and neutrons and then he felt like he could see more particles joining them. Particles that weren't any of the other three, somehow coming together and harmoniously joining in the dance of his atoms.

It occurred to him, that none of this should be happening. It occurred to him that his eye was still closed and that he was still self-aware and so he was still lucid and that this wasn't part of the dream. It occurred to him that the dream was breaking up.

Dipper blinked and opened both his eyes, only to reflexively shove his hands over his ears and an indescribable screech assaulted his ears. The dream he'd been standing in was unrecognisable. Or, no, it was recognisable but not enough. The colour where wrong and glaring and wouldn't let his eyes stay still. Every sound was a cacophony and was suddenly out of tune and backwards in a way his ears couldn't understand. The feel of what had been grass underfoot was like shards of glass made of bread. The air against his skin was like sandpaper and ice so frozen it ceased to be wet. He lasted only a second or less before his very mortal senses overloaded and short-circuited and he lost the ability to sense anything at all.

Trying to curl into the fetal position but unable to feel his limbs to do so, Dipper found himself staring (or maybe he was being?) his atoms again as new alien particles joined his electrons and joined his neutrons and protons. They weren't moving in any recognisable way, now, their pattern indescribable by any mortal language. But the longer he watched, the more Dipper understood. It was like a dawning epiphany, watching the particles move with each other. He had no words to describe it but he knew exactly what they were doing. And he knew what everything else was doing. He knew what everything else had done. He knew what everything else would ever do.

He knew lots of things.

Lots of things.

When the dance of particles stopped showing him all of life's mysteries and he started to remember that he was a being with an identity again, he looked up. Something had changed. Well, lots of things had changed. He wasn't in the dream he'd been in before - broken or not. But by instinct he knew this wasn't a different dream, either. The realm around him reminded him of something, aesthetically. It reminded him of marble oil painting; psychedelic and swirling. He got the nagging feeling that what he was seeing wasn't actually colour as he knew it but still he somehow registered the place to be in hues of red and violet. A fact prodded his mind until he paid attention to it and reminded him that visual light was only meant to exist between red and violet if it went via green. That was the rainbow, after all. You couldn't just jump from violet to red - nothing existed there. Yet somehow the realm around him managed to be red and violet and the impossible hues between them.

Dipper thought he heard screaming. Or laughter. Or maybe it was crying. He was getting mixed up, his senses weren't working properly. The ear drum was connected to... his brain. Somehow. A question appear, casually lounging next to him and he tapped it into attention. It pointed out - did he have a brain, technically? This was a ridiculous question. It was a very good question. He was a being of pure mind - it's not like he needed a physical vessel to move his thoughts and memories about like what mortals used their brains for. An alarm interrupted his thoughts and told him in the colour of cheese - why was he talking as if he weren't mortal? Why was he questioning that he wasn't mortal? The alarms collided and overlapped and-

He stopped. He pulled himself together, from where he'd been drifting. This place was startlingly familiar but utterly alien and it was not helping him concentrate. He thought back to a memory - a bootleg film he'd once seen - and tried to start at the beginning.

His name was Dipper Pines. He was brother and twin to Mabel Pines. He lived at Sa- no. He was currently living at Gravity Falls, Oregon.

The details got fuzzy from there. Repeating his name helped - as did repeating his sisters. He felt himself fall back into place every time he said his name and he felt memories arranging themselves properly every time he said his twins name. He was okay. He was Dipper Pines, future paranormal investigator extraordinaire. He was going to be fine. Once he figured out where he was and how to get back to Gravity Falls. He was going to be okay, everything would be fine.

He held onto his vest, needing the comforting touch of the puffer jacket in his hands. It had the comforting weight that let him know the journal was still hidden within it. At least he hadn't dropped in in the Dreamscape during... whatever that had been before. He still had his hat on, too. That was good, another comfort, to know that hadn't blown away or something. He spun around, stretching out, before looking at his surroundings again.

So, this place wasn't the Dreamscape. He knew that, somehow. It was swirling and was nauseating without actually making him sick. He tried to see the emotions and thoughts creating the place. Everything he could sense was dark, cruel and it was almost kind to call the feelings evil. It was negativity, everywhere. And he should've been repulsed but instead he felt comfortable. Serene. It felt like sweet songs should've felt like. He stared out at the realm, hearing the laughing-screams and absently aware that he didn't have an eye closed but was remaining lucid. He could see figures in the swirling haze. He could see dying, but no death. Suffering without the numbness to soothe it. He had a sudden yearning for a jaw of teeth and a set of pliers.

"Where am I?"

And no sooner had he voiced it than the answer threaded itself into his conciousness. His instinct had been correct. This was not the Dreamscape. But he was no closer to reality - in fact he was even further from its grasp.

This was the Nightmare Realm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You get no prize for picking up all the subtle hints. They're really kinda obtuse, I was not hiding my foreshadowing because the foreshadowing is in the summary. SO.
> 
> I had fun writing this? I hope it wasn't to weird to follow, though. All that dreamscape stuff. Also this was not what I was expecting to write, but I figured we'd had, what, two chapters of Mabel so far? About time we checked back in to see how Dipper was doing after his little cliff-hanger in Chapter 1. It turns out he is doing strangely.
> 
> We'll be back to Mabel, the Shack, the ritual and Bill flipping Cipher next chapter. Feedback is always appreciated, yo.


	5. The Consequences (Pt. 1)

"What. Did. You. Do!?"

Mabel was not actually sure how to answer that, even if answering Bill was her first priority. The light had cleared from the attic, the bulbs of all the decorative candles had blown and the pictures she'd used of Cipher and her brother had switched circles, she was pretty sure. Not that she was concentrating on any of that - she'd only even noticed the pictures because one was a drawing and one was a proper photo so it hadn't been hard to off-handly notice that they were out of place.

What she was instead concentrating on was what - or whom - she could only assume was Bill Cipher since the triangle demon was gone and... **this** was here instead. Angrily demanding an explanation from her. She was transfixed, taking in the details of this new form. He appeared human, for the most part, and looked her age or a little younger. He had tightly packed curls sitting fluffy and black atop his head, his nose wider than her own. He had the same colour skin as Shrieff Blubs, not to mention other minor attributes. And aside from a bowtie and a top hat somehow on him, he was completely naked.

"Oh boy." Mabel sighed to herself as she raised a hand to shield her eyes from looking down. "Okay. I have no idea what just happened there but Step One is to get you into clothing."

She walked over to her side of the room, looking for what to put Bill in. However the newly-made-human seemed to have other ideas.

" _You don't even know-!?_ Urgh! _That's just-_ I can't believe you would-! _The nerve of you meatsacks just-_ What you just- _argh!_ No. You know what? I'm not explaining this. **Sixer!** "

Bill started to stomp off out of the bedroom. Wide-eyed at Bill's imminent departure, Mabel grabbed the nearest sweater she could find and ran after him. He'd gotten to the second-story landing before she managed to get close enough to shove the sweater over his head. He flailed somewhat inside, yelling about a futile attack, before he managed to get one of his arms through the sleeves.

There was a moment that Mabel wished she could photograph of Bill looking puzzled down at his new sweater (one of her larger ones which managed to cover his butt and associated bits). He held up one arm, peering at the wool that now covered it, before turning his head and staring at the other armless sleeve. Wiggling his arm within the sleeve, he managed to shove his elbow into the empty sleeve and, promptly, got his arm stuck. A distressed whine emitting from his throat, he twirled about in place and attempted to dislodge his stuck arm. Rolling her eyes, Mabel carefully approached him, pushed his elbow out and threaded his arm hand-first through the sleeve. Bill squinted suspiciously at her before apparently labelling her and the sweater a non-threat.

"Now will you please come back up stairs and let me finish dressing you?"

"Dressing? _You don't even-_ any idea- _and now-_ utterly **stuck**! Urgh!" Bill muttered angrily and continued to storm downstairs.

Muttering angrily to herself, Mabel followed behind. Once he reached the ground floor, he started shouting out for 'Sixer' again. Mabel was glad she'd done this after Mystery Shack hours, especially as he was heading into the Gift Shop. As she pushed through the 'Staff Only' door she found Bill's small form banging a fist impatiently next to the vending machine.

"Come on, Sixer! I know you're down there! I helped you build that damn place. Get up here and explain to Shooting Star the spectacular damn mistake she made! Because I am not going through the utter torture of explaining this indignity!"

Had he still been in his triangle form, this display might've been intimidating. But as it was, he was in a prepubescent body complete with a high and squeaky voice. Mabel had to shove her sweater cuff into her mouth to stop her giggles from becoming audible.

"Sixer, Sixer! Get up here!"

Mabel lightly chewed on her cuff, muffling her giggling as she watched the mini-fit from the doorway. This continued for minutes before the vending machine swung open and Stanford emerged. Mabel resorted to slapping both hands over her mouth as he comically swung his gaze around the gift shop, looking right over the top of Bill's head. He only looked down when Bill hit the wall and shouted his nickname.

Ford looked down, bewilderment and a touch of suspicion on his face, and gently closed the vending machine behind him.

"Mabel, who is this?"

Bill answered before she could get a word in edgewise.

"Aw come on Sixer, don't tell me you don't recognise your best friend! I know I'm not looking like my usual self but you can blame Shooting Star for that!" his cruel yet chipper tone warped into the whiney voice he'd been shouting in before as he continued, "Her and her dumb, stupid halfbaked, homebaked damn **urgh**!"

Bill threw his hands up and twirled around to face Mabel. Pointing a condemning digit at her, he demanded;

"You! Tell him what you did!" he whirled around and pointed the finger at Ford next, "And you! Tell her how badly she messed up - and then **fix this**!"

Ford took a half step to the side, so that Bill was not directly between them, and addressed her.

"This is Bill Cipher, isn't it." he looked distinctly unimpressed with this turn of events. After she gave a sheepish half-shrug, he sighed and asked, "What exactly **did** happen?"

"Well... I was thinking, and I mean no offence Grunkle Ford, but you were taking **ages**  to get Dipper back. So I borrowed your Journals and I went to the library and I did, like, a humongous amount of research and I guess I kinda... made-up-my-own-ritual?"

"You **made up** your own ritual? How did- that's impossible! Do you know the amount of years people put in to studying the paranormal arts before attempting something like that?"

"Uh, a lot, I guess? I mean, I didn't exactly make it all up. I looked up other rituals and just kinda mashed it all together. Like taxidermy!"

"Taxider- Mabel, did you make a sacrifice for this ritual?"

"What? No! Well, yes. Kind of? You said that heart-tube-thingy was just a keepsake and all the books and sites said I needed a soul! Look, all I did was summon Bill, draw a few circles, smash the soul and read the spell and then suddenly-"

Bill cut her off her totally reasonable explanation; "The spell! That's what- _argh if you had any-_ The spell! It was all fine until that dumb, dumb, dumb spell!"

Ford spared him a glance before looking back at her.

"Don't say it aloud again but; have you got a written version of the spell?"

"Um... oh yeah!" She pulled the piece of paper out of her pocket and smoothed it out before handing it over.

Ford took the paper, reading while she and Bill waited. With nothing better to do, and now standing a lot closer, she looked over at him. He gave her an almighty frown before he made a lightbulb expression and he stuck his tongue out at her, screwing up his face. She silently gasped and made the same face back. He crossed his eyes and slackened his mouth in retaliation and she rolled her eyes back and made a blabbing motion. To this, he used a finger to flatten his nose and mouth oinking sounds at her which she responded to by hooking her fingers in her cheeks to pull the edges of her mouth wide and hanging her tongue out.

Just in time for Ford to look up from the spell and see her pulling a face and Bill looking far too innocent. Mabel quickly snapped back to a more sensible posture. Deciding to apparently ignore her antics, he asked;

"Mabel, where exactly did you **find** this spell?"

"Oh I didn't **find** it - I wrote it! Then I put it in Google Translate to Latinify it and - poof!" she threw up jazz hands, "Magic happened."

"Googol... translate? How can a number be used to translate? Did you decode this?"

"Silly Grunkle Ford - Google's not a number. It's part of the internet. You put all your words in and- boop! It turns it into a different language!"

"Right. Well using some third-party... _source_ would explain this, I suppose. The good news is, the spell worked. The bad news is it doesn't do what you want it to."

"Yay! Wait, what?"

"You heard the man! You wrecked the spell and trapped me in this weak, gross body."

"But it worked! You just said it worked!"

"It did work. I'm guessing what you were trying to do was make it switch Dipper and Bill's locations?"

She nodded.

"The first two parts are actually quite good, getting control of the magic like that. And you defined who you wanted it to effect rather well, assuming you had some kind of anchor like a picture or a possession or something. But this part? ' _Permuta status_ '? That doesn't mean 'to switch location' - it means 'to switch place'. As in one's place in **life** \- if one is a king or a lord or a merchant or a farmer or..."

"Or a dream demon. Or a disgusting mix of water and blood and bone shaped into a bipedal form."

"Or that, yes. Do you understand?" Ford seemed almost soft when asking her.

The gears in Mabel's head were turning with this new information. So her ritual had worked, technically, it just hadn't gotten her brother back. Instead it had switched their rank or title or whatever in life. And if it had made Bill into a human then that meant that Dipper must have been turned into-

Realisation dawned on her face.

"There! Look! She gets it! Whoop-di-doodily-doo! Now," Bill punched the front of the vending machine, " **Fix this, Stanford Pines!** "

Ford opened his mouth to reply, but seemed distracted by the small boy's expression. Mabel couldn't see it until he'd partially turned to face them both side-on, but when she did see his face she understood why even her serious grunkle might be caught off-guard.  Bill was holding the fist he'd punched with up to his chest, almost in front of his face, and was staring down at it with the most horrified and betrayed expression. His gaping mouth closed into a pout just in time for him to try and stifle a sniff. Mabel and Ford looked between each other, trying to figure out why this sudden change had overcome the loud ex-demon and trying to figure out what to do.

It clicked for Mabel first and she did her best to hide her own giggle as she reached out a hand, "Aw, pain isn't very funny anymore, is it?"

Bill frantically shook his head as she patted his shoulder. Ford looked between them both, gears clearly churning away in his head, before responding with a bit of a smirk.

"Ha. I wondered why you were asking **me** to fix this."

Despite his preoccupation with his injury, Bill's shoulders tensed noticeably under his borrowed sweater. The was a loaded silence between the two, Mabel a spectator in the game of whom would break first. Bill won the contest of silence, though at the cost of Ford's cruel words;

"That human body isn't as capable as you need it to be, is it?"

"Bwhaaa?" Mabel reminded them that she was here and that she couldn't make the same crazy leaps of knowledge that they could.

Bill scrunched up his features and snapped; "Fine! Laugh it up, Poindexter: your feeble homo sapien grey matter isn't capable of holding my omniscient knowledge. To stop my new self from instantly going insane there were... sacrifices."

He stared at Ford, his face hard but not emotive enough to actually glare, as if he were challenging the human to taunt him about this. Mabel frowned softly behind his back. She hadn't meant for any of this to happen - she'd just wanted Dipper back. Bill wasn't her friend but she didn't wish him ill, not exactly. She wished he'd leave her family and friends alone and stop being so cryptically mean, but she didn't actively wish him harm. It sounded like having a human's capacity for pain wasn't the only change she'd forced him through. And if Bill was going through this, she couldn't even imagine what was happening to her brother.

It was more important than ever that they get in contact with him.

"Alright then." Ford at least had the humility to look somewhat ashamed of his gloating, "Well, luckily for us, summoning a known dream demon will be easier than trying to swap Bill and Dipper was. Once I have Dipper, I'll get to work on reversing this." He looked over Bill at Mabel, "And this time, no one tries anything without running it by me first, got it? Mabel - keep an eye on Bill. Even if he's been limited by the transmogrification, don't think you can let your guard down for even a second. He's still a sneaky, manipulative liar who'll use **any** dirty trick to gain the upper hand and he's still **dangerous**."

Still cradling his fist, Bill grinned over at him; "Aw... IQ, you sweet-talker, you!"

Ford glanced back at him, only sparing him a frown but not breaking eye contact as he told Mabel; "I'll be just downstairs if you require my assistance."

And with that parting assurance, he opened the vending machine back up and left Mabel in charge of the being of ultimate cosmic power confined to itty-bitty physical form. Bill caught her looking and let a wide smile creep across his face deliberately slowly. Mabel cocked her head and jabbed his sore fist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little more is revealed of the complication at hand and now we know for sure what's happened.
> 
> More art, which I had to hastily add a top hat to after I forgot what I'd dressed him in. On that note, quick poll: Proper top hat (as pictured above) or teeny headband top hat? I can't decide, so I pose the question to you readers instead.
> 
> EDIT: At least three people seem to prefer the tiny top hat so... picture and mental image have been edited :3


	6. Humans Are Weird

Thankfully, dinner was not always an organised affair in the Mystery Shack. Grunkle Stan always made sure there was food available, but he seemed to have a loose grasp of time and wasn't always home by dinner. Grunkle Ford kept even stranger hours, unsurprisingly, and so the twins where often left on their own to figure out or to reheat dinner.

Even that ritual had been shaken up by Dipper's disappearance. Grunkle Stan had been making a noticeable effort to join Mabel for dinner more often but that just made the nights when he was late more obvious. And more hurtful. Mabel was left, sometimes, fixing a sandwich for herself and taking it to eat in her room. She'd lean against her bed and vacantly watch her twin's side of the room as she mechanically chewed on her peanut and jelly and sprinkles dinner. Even something as simple as dinner was somehow ruined without Dipper there. She had just wished that he was any closer to coming home.

Mabel reflected that one must be careful what they wished for, as a cold slice of devon narrowly missed her head and landed with a 'splat' on the wall behind her. Company was making dinner exciting, at least.

Bill sat on one of the kitchen chairs, his legs kicking vaguely and his arms recrossed. Mabel had been trying for the past twenty minutes or so to find something he would agree to eat. Bill, contrarily, had been spending the last twenty minutes spurning her efforts. He may have the body of a preteen but he had the attitude of a toddler, she was fast finding out. He'd swiped a bowl of pasta off of the table, ruining both his dinner and hers, he'd carefully piled as much scrambled eggs on his spoon as he could and had then dumped it onto the floor and lastly he'd dismantled the sandwich she'd made so as to fling its individual bits and pieces around the kitchen. She had absolutely had it.

"Fine! Fine - you know what? No dinner for you! You can go straight to sleep with no supper at all, mister!"

She walked around the kitchen, throwing away the wasted food and cleaning the place up as Bill watched on gleefully. A giggle bubbled out of him and she muttered while scooping the eggs off of the floor;

"You laugh now, but **you've** never gone to bed hungry before."

"Uh, yeah, Shooting Star. I'm a Dream Demon - I don't need to go to bed."

She swivelled around to point a finger at him, "Ha! But you're not!"

"Geez, I haven't broken you already, have I? You're more fragile than I thought."

"I'm not broken and you're not a dream demon! Not anymore, remember? You're a mushy mortal human like the rest of us."

She sidled up to him, a look of concern dawning on his face.

"You remember when you ruined my sock puppet show, don't cha? It's just like that except you can't just skeddadle-sonny-doodle off when you get too sick. Because you're stuck in that body. And if you don't take care of it then you're going get sick and hurty. Just like the rest of us humans do."

Bill was frowning at her. Just as she'd suspected, he hadn't been thinking about the long term problem with throwing dinner around the room. With no reply forthcoming, she finished cleaning the room and then fixed herself a sandwich. She sat across from him and ate. Hopefully, the memory of the sock puppet show would be enough to convince Bill that he did actually need to eat. She didn't know if Bill's health would have any baring on Dipper's health, once this was all fixed, but either way she couldn't just let Bill wreck himself. He was a lot more fragile now and she guessed that even he didn't really realise his new limits.

Bill interrupted her second half of sandwich.

"Humans don't need to eat **every** day, right? Sixer could go a few days without me feeding him."

She finished her bite before responding, "You're meant to eat at least three square meals a day. You could skip them but it isn't healthy. If you skip them you can get sick and you'll get tired and stuff."

"But I did skip meals! And the humans kept on moving!"

She rolled her eyes at his whining, "We don't just straight away collapse. It happens slower than that. I bet any time you possessed a human and made them skip a whole bunch of meals, they looked really sick after."

Bill looked thoughtful at this and Mabel returned to her sandwich. She managed to finish it in peace and washed up her plate before going to walk back upstairs. At the doorway, she remembered Grunkle Ford's instructions and instead she turned around and leaned in the doorway. He hadn't moved from where she'd left him. They stayed like that, her watching him and him staring down at the table.

He looked different, like this. Obviously he looked different - he wasn't a triangle anymore, after all. But it went deeper than just his aesthetic form. He looked just like any other just-barely-pre-teen; a little lost and a bit too eager. He looked a little fragile and Mabel felt her heart pang. It shouldn't, she knew. She remembered all the awful things he'd done. She didn't even want to think about what would've happened if she'd handed over the Journal back then. But he was human now and that was her fault. He was probably feeling trapped and afraid. And that was her fault. She almost felt guilty about it - remembering her desperation was the only thing that stopper her from feeling guilty. But maybe this would be a good thing after all, she thought. She could teach Bill about being human; not just so he could keep himself alive but also so he could see why humans are so great! She could teach him all the good things about being human and then, maybe, then, just maybe...

Maybe he'd stop. Stop all his mean things and plans. Maybe he'd decide humans were worth keeping around, alive, intact and autonomous.

"Are you ever gonna get lost?"

Mabel snapped out of her thoughts, focusing on Bill.

"What?"

"Weren't you going to go upstairs and go to bed? Go away."

"Uh, no, mister cranky-pants. I've got orders to keep my eyes on you." a thought occurred, "Why are **you** still here? I think this is the stillest I've seen you since, uh, this whole thing happened."

Bill sunk further into his seat.

"No reason!" He sat up and then pushed his chair back (with an almighty screech) and jumped up, "Ah ha, you're so nosey, Shooting Star! What's next then? Let's get moving!"

Mabel mentally put on her skepticals, squinting at him. He fidgeted under her gaze.

"You're hiding something."

"Uh, yeah. You think I'm not still making plans, come on Braces you've gotta give me more credit than that! Not that I'm going to tell you any of my plans, so how about we drop that and do the next thing you do."

"No, you're hiding something else!" she looked around the kitchen, trying to guess what Bill had been thinking. As her gaze landed on the fridge, it came to her; "You were going to have dinner, weren't you!"

His answer, "No!" came far too fast to be honest.

"You were! You were! You were going to make it yourself and you didn't want me to see!"

Bill threw himself back down into the chair and huffily crossed his arms.

"So what if I was - are you going to let me starve?"

A moment passed, Bill sulking and Mabel triumphantly remaining in the doorway, before the silence was broken.

"Well go on then." Mabel pressed.

"What?"

"I'm not going to go and you want to eat. So make yourself dinner."

It was his turn to look at her suspiciously. Warily, he rose from his chair and he slowly moved around the kitchen. He opened all the cupboards and drawers, peering into each one and occasionally removing something to examine it. Mabel watched him, occasionally interjecting when he pulled something out to say if it wasn't edible. She repeated this treatment as he emptied the fridge and found herself with the duty of refilling the fridge once he was done. Eventually his inspection was complete and he ended up copying her and attempting to make a sandwich.

It was actually pretty interesting to watch. Bill clearly knew what all the parts of a sandwich were in theory but didn't seem to understand how they actually came together. He got out two pieces of bread and the peanut butter and the jam. He laid out the bread and then stared at the jars before picking up the peanut butter and tipping the container down towards the bread. It took a few moments of this before she realised he was trying to pour it. He put it down again, eventually, and poked the surface before shoving a finger right down in it. She'd comment if she hadn't done stuff like that before. Removing his finger (absently licking it off) he looked around before spotting a butter knife on the kitchen sink. He retrieved it, attempted to stab the peanut butter and finally figured out that the knife could be used with a scooping motion.

It took him several minutes, in the end, to make his sandwich.

Upstairs, she tried to take him through the rituals of getting ready for bed. He seemed willing to listen to her instructions now, at least, but Bill listening to her instructions was not proving to be all that less frustrating than Bill not listening to her instructions.

Brushing one's teeth, for example, required a lot more steps than Mabel had previously guessed. She had to explain that toothpaste was put on before the brushing commenced and then she had to explain what toothpaste was (and why) and then she had to explain how much toothpaste and how to get that much toothpaste. Every step had a minimum of three complications and they were all difficult to explain.

Showering was a lot more simple, thankfully, but also a lot more awkward. Mabel refused to see more of Bill than she'd already seen, on principle, and so had to direct him from the other side of the shower cubicle. She realised, as she looked down at the sweater she'd pulled over him, that she was going to have to find him some sort of wardrobe to wear while he was like this. Meanwhile, she attempted to explain through the shower the importance of wearing clothing.

Mabel wondered if Bill would ever stop answering her explanations with "Yeah, but why, Shooting Star? Humans are weird."

Finally she had Bill fed, cleaned, wearing her spare nightgown and in her bedroom.

The problem was the best place for him to sleep for the night. They did have that spare room, of course. Grunkle Ford had seemed to claim it but he honestly spent far more time in the basement than he did in his room. Or he did as far as she could tell anyway. But aside from the spare room being one of her Grunkle's, it was also still full of said Grunkle's experiments and she didn't feel comfortable leaving Bill in a room full of obviously paranormal stuff. Which meant that the best room for him to sleep in was hers. And if she was going to sleep in her own bed then the only place free for him to sleep was on Dipper's bed.

But she still hadn't touched Dipper's side of the room. She'd pushed a few things around to make room for the ritual circle (which had creepily faded away at some point) but aside from that she hadn't really touched his side of the room. It made her stomach churn to think of Bill sleeping where her brother should be. Bill, for his part, had a strange expression on his face. He seemed torn about something, too, looking apprehensively between the twins' beds.

Of course, there was another option to her problem.

"Uh, okay, so. How about you go over there and lay down on top of the mattress but under the sheets and try to sleep. And I'll just be over here on this side of the room."

He turned his eyes to her, a disbelieving expression on his face. "Uh, why?"

"To sleep! Like a normal person ah ha ha no other reasons here - whoop-whoop classic Mabel ah ha ha." she nervously backed towards Dipper's bed, which she had indicted she'd be sleeping in.

"Sheesh, remind me to give you some tips about lying, Shooting Star! It's funny just how terrible you are. But the bed you gave me is clearly yours and that bed is obviously Pine Tree's."

She stopped, guilt all over her face, her heels at the edge of the offending bed. She couldn't quite bring herself to get into her twin's bed while Bill was watching her so intently, his baby-face scrunched up in concentration. When it looked like he wasn't going to give up, she sighed and dropped the act.

"I just don't want someone else in Dipper's bed, okay? Just," she sighed, melancholy, and slumped into bed. "Just get into bed and get some sleep. All you do is close your eyes and try to think of nothing and your body will make you sleep. Probably."

She pulled the sheets up around her, breathing in the faint smell of her brother and rolled over to face the wall.

While Mabel was busy mourning her brother still not being home, Bill was facing a different problem. He didn't really care about which bed he slept in except that finding out the answer might've given him insight into a weakness and that the longer he drew on the conversation the longer it would be before he had to try and sleep.

Despite knowing that he was completely human, he still wasn't convinced that he could sleep. He had never actually slept in all of his existence. It was, though he'd never admit it aloud, a frightening prospect. To be wilfully unconscious, to have one's fragile little body vulnerable for any monster or enemy to come along and disembowel. Even worse - leaving one's body and mind vulnerable to various psychoparanormal beings. The Dreamscape was not new to him - it was his second home, behind the Nightmare Realm. But he'd never entered the Dreamscape from merely sleeping. He'd certainly never entered the Dreamscape without being in control of the realm. The closest he'd come was probably when other dream demons tried to contest him for the Dreamscape - but he'd been the first dream demon and he'd ripped them all apart and remolded them into something more pleasant. Like eternally screaming heads.

He wasn't looking forward to sleeping and he was even less looking forward to potentially dreaming.

And thus it was for completely different reasons that both Mabel and Bill lay in their beds, frustratingly awake until the early hours of the morning when bodily fatigue pulled them down into a restless slumber.

* * *

Morning was no less of a hassle. Both woke up early, the light of daybreak not yet done warming the world, and the both woke up looking exhausted. A late and then restless night had done neither of them any good.

Mabel had flailed awake, unsure of where she was in her half-asleep state when she'd realised that her room had somehow mirrored itself. It had crashed back to her, snapping her awake, when she'd sat up and looked around the room. Her brother was still missing, possibly in more danger than before, and she had an ex-demon now-human to take care of and explain 'mortal living' to. She expected Bill to be laughing at her display in some manner, when she saw he was awake, but instead his gaze seemed vacant and he looked faintly sick.

She sighed in anticipation of the day ahead of her and hoped he didn't actually vomit. She began her morning ritual, starting with getting out her outfit for the day. She could feel Bill's eyes following her and so she spoke outloud, informing him of what they'd need to do before being ready to properly start the day.

"Well, okay, first things first - we **cannot** have a repeat of yesterday with you running around in your birthday suit like that! Birthday suit? Ritual suit? Hmm... Anyway! Clothing! As a human, it is important to always be wearing clothing." Quickly, having learnt her lesson the hard way yesterday, she added; "Unless you're changing from one set of clothes into another. Or unless you're having a shower. Or a bath."

She paused, trying to think if she'd forgotten any other exceptions. "And you can pull down your pants and underwear when you use the toilet." She squinted and then nodded to herself.

"Luckily for you," she continued with growing enthusiasm, "You've couldn't have asked for a better assisstant when it comes to clothing. See, some people think clothing is just bits of fabric we wrap on ourself to hide our being nude." She whipped around, pointing a finger at Bill, with sudden intensity, "But those people are poorly-dressed fools!"

Returning to her enthused demeanour, she went on; "Clothing is about fashion and I - I'm not just a fashion expert, oh no no no. I am Mabel Pines - fashionista! So you are in good hands. Trust me on this."

She gestured to the outfit she'd laid out on Dipper's bed, "For instance, today I will be showcasing this shaggy green sweater that has the 'shag' on the middle cut off in strips so that it can say 'Mow For It!' Which, ah ha, I think we can both agree is a classic. I will be pairing it with a gorgeous magenta skirt and a mint-green undershirt as well as," she picked up her underwear, before she realised what she was doing and nervously shoved it under her sweater, laughing to try and cover up her mistake, "Ah-ha-ha-ha-HA! And my underwear which we don't need to really see oops.

She waited for a beat, letting the red in her cheeks drain out before she turned around with a flourish.

"Ta-da~! And I will finish this all off with a green headband that has a daisy flower stuck on it."

Bill, now sitting up in bed, looked at her with a somewhat shocked expression. He was not well rested but even if he had been, his opinion on clothes had been firmly in the 'bits of fabric mortals wrap themselves in to hide their gross bodies' camp. All this information and the thought she put into planning an outfit was a little overwhelming.

"Now turn around!" she demanded.

"What, why?"

"So I can get changed, silly-dilly! Oh, right! This is another human thing - you don't watch while other people are getting changed! You have to give them their _privacy_. Usually if someone wanted to get changed, they'd go into their room or in a bathroom or in a changeroom and they'd close the door so they had privacy to change but... that's not really an option here because you can't go outside until you're dressed and you can't get dressed until I'm-"

"Okay okay!" he held up his hands in an effort to get her to stop, "I get it. Humans are ashamed of their naked bodies."

"What- wait- no! We're not **ashamed** we just..." Mabel looked off to one side, trying to explain it.

Bill looked at her with an expression of disbelief, "You just hide it with fabric 24-7 except when you have to wash it and you just don't ever want anyone to see it. Yepperiee, Shooting Star, sounds like you humans are real proud of your meatsacks. Hey look! I don't blame you for being ashamed. I'd be ashamed too if I was confined to such a gross, temporal form." The two of them blinked at each other, before they both looked down at his new body, "I am ashamed of this body." he concluded before dramatically throwing himself back down on the bed.

"Arrrr!" he cried out, before rolling over and hammering a fist into her pillow, "Of all the colossal mess-ups, **this** is the one that happens! I should just strangle the life out of you."

She'd taken advantage of Bill's face being buried in her bed to start getting dressed, but paused as she started to pull her nightshirt off,

"Uh, not that I want you to but - why don't you?"

Bill's reply was muffled by his unwillingness to pull his head up; "Why don't I what?"

She finished putting her undershirt on before replying; "Why don't you just strangle me or whatever? I mean, you can now, because you're physical. Not that I wouldn't totally ninja chop you back into the Shack if you decided to use your human self for evil but you haven't even tried."

Bill reared his head, watching skeptically as she lowered her sweater onto her.

"You've got more brain cells than that, Shooting Star. I can't get back into my home realm like this. Whether I like it or not - I'm stuck. If I hurt you - as hilarious as it would be - then..." he trailed off uncomfortably.

It took a few moments, Mabel putting on the final touches of her outfit as she mulled it over, before she realised his unsaid implication. Grunkle Ford had hardly been kind to him yesterday and she was the only other person who knew the full story. And she'd spent all of last night trying to teach Bill how to survive being human. She was helping him when he most needed help - while he was stranded, alone and feeling weak. If he hurt her, who would be left to help him in his time of need? It was almost sweet, when she finally understood what he was saying in-between the lines.

Wisely deciding not to directly reply, she just smiled at him before returning to the task at hand.

"Okay! Now it's time to plan **your** outfit. Hm... I guess I'll have to make it up out of mine and Dipper's wardrobes. Maybe we can get you some clothes of your own later. Ooo! I should knit you a sweater! You'll love it; I knit only the coolest of sweaters."

Bill sat up on the bed again, returning to watching Mabel plan.

"Hm, I guess first is underwear? Hopefully Dipper's will fit you..." she made it a few steps towards Dipper's dresser before a thought occurred to her. "Uh, actually, do you need Dipper's underwear? Or would mine fit?"

"Shooting Star I have no idea what you're talking about."

Still somewhat reluctant to disturb Dipper's belongings, it had occurred to her that she didn't actually know that Bill's body looked like. Or more specifically, she'd stopped herself yesterday from seeing what his underwear-area looked like. Because that would be rude and gross, of course. But dream-demons didn't have an 'underwear-area' - Bill hadn't even really worn clothes when he was a triangle. She didn't even know if she was meant to call him a 'him' at all - Dipper and she had just defaulted to that pronoun when they'd heard his name was Bill.

"Uh, well," she stammered slightly before half-turning away and looking towards the opposite wall, "Lift up your nightshirt and see what you have going on between your legs."

"I thought you said I can only take my clothes off it-"

"I know, I know! Argh, this is a weird exception thing, okay? I need to know what underwear to give you. They're made differently. So, just lift it up and tell me what you have."

There were sounds from behind her, presumably of Bill checking like she'd asked. Then there was a pause.

"Well?" she prompted.

"Well well well well well. I've got. Stuff."

She let out a frustrated noise, resisting the urge to turn around and give an exasperated flail in his general direction.

"What's that supposed to mean?!"

"I've got stuff. I don't know, Shooting Star, all you humans look the same to me."

"Oh, right. Um um um," she frantically tried to think of how he could tell her without her having to turn around. She really didn't want to have to turn around. She tried to think back to when her parents would have her and Dipper share a bath. "Have you got a little dangly bit, kinda like a thumb? Or is it mostly flat?"

"Woah! Some humans have a thumb growing between their legs? No one told me about that. I might have to reassess."

"It's not an actual thumb! It just kinda looks like one - like the length and width. It hasn't got a nail or bones or anything, erck! Have you got one or not?"

"Uh, yes."

Frustrated at her own ambiguous wording, she clarified; "Yes you have one?"

"No."

"So you don't have one?"

"No."

This time she did flail in frustration. "That doesn't make any sense!"

While she was flailing, however, the answer clicked into place. She stopped flailing, "Wait, so, you kind of have a dangly bit, but also kind of are mostly flat?"

"Yep." Bill sounded chipper, probably in response to Mabel's obviously rising stress.

"Oh. Okay." she thought a little, taking that in, and mentally readjusted her fashion plan as she asked; "Uh, hey, do you mind that we call you 'he' and 'him' and stuff?"

"I really couldn't care less, Shooting Star. Honestly, I had to make up a new name just so that your mortal heads wouldn't explode when you tried calling for me. Your pronouns mean nothing to me."

"Okie-dokie then." she began to turn around, but stopped, remembering at the last minute to tell Bill to put his nightshirt back down. She didn't go through all that just to get a flash now.

"You can borrow some of my underwear for now. But tell me if it's uncomfortable - like, if it's too tight between your legs."

Bill shrugged as she continued walking around the room, collecting things for his outfit. Eventually she had it laid out like she'd done with her own earlier. So pointed at each article, explaining whose and what it was, before she started to hand pieces of clothing to Bill so that he could get dressed for the day.

As she faced the wall, Mabel reconsidered how today might go. With Bill's reluctant admission of wanting her help, she was feeling positive. She would help Bill with humanity and, maybe, endear him to it. While she had her project, she'd leave Grunkle Ford to his project. As much as she missed Dipper, she didn't feel so empty now. She had something to do - someone to take care of. She hadn't had her mystery twin to investigate any mysteries with and, lately, she hadn't even wanted to do any of her own hobbies. She felt re-energised - like she had a purpose again. No one could replace Dipper, but Bill will do in a pinch.

When Bill was finally dressed, she led them downstairs to finish doing all those little things humans needed to do before getting into the fun part of the day. She wondered if she could talk Bill into helping her with Stan's chores.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this while I was on holiday in Melbourne. And, if I may shed modesty, I truly out did myself. This chapter is over 4000 words! Mabel's dialogue just rolled so easily off of my finger tips. I'm quite proud.
> 
> Also - watch as I casually insert my own headcanons for characters into the fic. That being said, I personally prefer the headcanon that Mabel & Dipper are monozygotic 'identical' twins but I really couldn't think of a better way for Mabel to know two sets of anatomy without her and Dipper having differing sets. Lemme know if you're know headcanoning the Mystery Twins in this fic as both trans or both cis! ;P
> 
> And yes it was very fun to write Bill being eternally confused by all things human. More to come.


	7. The Trouble

"All right you layabouts, time to wipe the gunk out of your eyes and smell that beautiful smell of gullible tourists."

The four of them stood in a line in the gift shop; Soos looking as attentive as ever, Mabel bright and ready to go, Wendy looking bored and... And Bill. Stan strode in front of them, barking out orders as he often did at the start of the day when he managed to get them all in to work on time.

"Now today's gonna be busy. I finally convinced the tours that there's an official rest stop around here, so they'll be bringing in at least three extra buses of fat, fat wallets for us today. We don't know how long that'll last, so we gotta milk it for what it's worth A.S.A.P."

He stopped his pacing to stand firm in front of them, mimicking some kind of military leader ordering his troops. He pointed to Soos,

"Soos! I need the bathroom in tip-top shape. It's gotta look so inviting that even people who don't need to use it want to use it! We let them in and then- BAM! Hit them with 'Only Customers Can Use the Facilities' line. Wendy!"

He turned on her unimpressed expression next. Narrowing his eyes, he tested her;

"And what'll you be doing?"

She rolled her eyes before replying, "On register, taking cash from every sucke- _cough, ack, cough_ \- I mean **customer** that we get."

"And...?"

"Annnnnd swiping a complimentary twelve dollar 'Mystery Shack' token, hiding it in their bag and conveniently telling them the subtotal instead of the total."

"Ha! Perfect! Mabel! You're on entertainer duty for the first half of the day - you need to talk about how fantastic all of your grunkle's exhibits and gift shop junk is and how no one can live without," he picked up a knick-knack from the nearest shelf, "One of... ah..." Stan squinted at it, "What- what is this? Some kind of, ice tray, but, uh- Nevermind! The point is - they can't live without it! I'll probably need you to help me make more merchandise after lunch. And you-!"

He whirled on Bill, before giving an owlish few blinks.

"Who are you?" he glanced at Mabel, "You make a new friend or something?"

"Well... not... **exactly**..."

Mabel hurried to explain after glancing at Bill who was doing his now trademark creepy, slow, too-wide toothy grin.

"So I was trying to do this magic ritual thingy to help get Dipper back but it went all loopy on me and instead of getting Dipper I accidentally trapped a demon in human form?"

Stan, now with a small frown, looked away from Bill's disturbing expression to look at Mabel.

"He's called Bill." she added helpfully.

Stan sighed heavily, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Does Ford know about this?" He peeked up over his exasperation to see Mabel nodding.

"And he has to stay here?"

Mabel nodded again.

"Fine. Well I assume you ain't paying board-"

"I can pay you in the screams of newly widowed spouses." Bill interjected.

"Since you ain't paying board," Stan stressed, seemingly trying to speak over Bill, "Then you work for me as long as you're staying here."

Stan snapped back into his miltary-esque stature; "You're with Mabel! You'll be spending the first half of the day convincing city-slickers that their life is incomplete without as much junk from this shop as their wallets can buy. Now get to it! Scat!"

The four of them fled to their various parts of the shop, diligently getting started on work. Wendy set up the register, Soos disappeared off to grab his tools, Mabel began adjusting the merchandise and Bill followed behind her like an errant kitten (complete with threats to bat items off of shelves).

From the doorway to the lounge room, Stan watched his grand niece with concern. He wish he knew how better to help her - none knew better than he how it felt to have their twin go supernaturally-missing. He was comforted by the thought that she, at least, wasn't directly responsible. Unfortunately neither of the main two ways he knew to dull the pain of a missing twin were appropriate for him to suggest for Mabel. One was ending every night in a drunken stupor to numb the pain and to eliminate nightmares and the other was to throw one's self, body and soul, into bringing one's twin back home.

He wasn't going to get his little niece drunk, no matter how much it might help, and out of all of them Ford really was the one most qualified to bring Dipper home. Or so he assumed - Mabel had done some impressive things during the Summer and Stan was sure he only knew a fraction of what she'd been up to. He hadn't realised that Mabel had already attempted method two of numbing the pain, though. He hated that he hadn't even noticed her preparing some kooky ritual. Didn't that take time? Aren't those things unsubtle? Shouldn't he have recognised what she was doing?

He knew that she was lucky that she just ended up with some demon-in-a-human instead of something worse happening. He tried not to think about how easily she might've ended up dead. Or worse than dead. He couldn't think about how easily he'd almost lost her. What would he say to her parents? That he'd managed to loose both of them and he couldn't explain why without talking about demons and ghosts and other paranormal things?

And now there was this 'Bill' who felt weirdly familiar, like someone else's memory scratching at the inside of his mind. And he was a demon, which just couldn't be a good thing. It comforted him marginally that Ford knew about this arrangement, but only marginally. His brother wouldn't maliciously keep anything that might harm their family but who could be a bit... clueless. Like that time Stan had found some acid-spitting monster in the basement, had promptly killed it when it had tried to spit acid at him and Ford had proceeded to complain about how difficult such a monster was to capture - completely dismissive when Stan pointing out that the consequences would've been far more disastrous had one of the kids had been walking passed instead of him.

Not even mentioning that he was reasonably sure this was the same demon Mabel and Ford had been talking about when Dipper was first kidnapped - the yellow one that had appeared for a second that had disappeared Dipper in the first place. Stanley knew a callous conman when he saw one - preteen body or not. He would be keeping an eye on the demon-kid.

And Mabel had said that his brother knew about all this. He needed to talk to Ford - what had he been thinking, letting Mabel do some mysterious ritual? If there was a ritual why hadn't Ford done it - or why hadn't he asked him to do it? Unfortunately he'd have to wait until the Shack was closed before he could go down into the basement. It wouldn't do to re-open the vending machine to a gift shop full of curious tourists. As much as he'd love to charge them through the nose for yet another Mystery Tour, he didn't trust the basement to be safe enough. And he doubted his brother would appreciate the intrusion.

He'd just keep an eye on Mabel and the demon and he'd wait until the end of the day to talk to Ford. He'd keep this family safe as much as he was able.

* * *

Mabel and Bill sat side by side at the dinner table, waiting for Stan to bring Ford upstairs for a family meal. The day hadn't been too bad. Mabel hadn't been sure what to expect of Bill and in the end she couldn't say she was shocked but the day had still been unexpected. The thing was, Bill could be rather charismatic. He'd been an asset in conning people into buying things for the most part. He could be charming, he knew in a flash what people's weak points where and he knew how to make his offer seem irresistible. All leftovers from his days as a dream demon, she guessed.

But of course there was also the left over from Bill having been an eldritch demon. Because she hadn't coached him on human expressions yet and his grins where always too wide, sometimes unnerving a customer out of a sealed-deal. He blinked normally most of the time, but occasionally she'd she him blink one eye and then the other, or blink too many times in quick succession. He knew how to shake hands, but didn't know how to high-five or fist-bump or what nodding meant. Not to mention his far too casual mentions of things like death, torture or worse. One time Bill had said something so bad that Stan had covered her ears and given the ex-demon a solid thwack over his head.

It was a peculiar mix. Sometimes he seemed as human as the rest of them - right up until he did something that was almost beyond even Mabel's fantastic comprehension abilities.

Not that she thought his weirdness was **bad** , exactly. She wasn't one to stamp out weirdness in any form. It was just the creepiness that needed to be toned down. That and he needed to learn more about how humans interacted with each other. He could learn, she was so sure. She just needed more time to teach him.

At the moment, she was explaining cutlery and finding it surprisingly difficult to explain forks and knives without using violent terminology. Forks stabbed and knives cut, that's what they did, but she didn't want to give Bill ideas and have him accidentally hurt himself. Halfway through an explanation, she stopped and looked up at Bill, whom she had suddenly realised had been a little **too** quiet in the past minute.

His grin gave him away and Mabel realised that of course he knew how violent utensils where used.

"Bill!"

The ex-demon broke out into giggles at her exhasperation. Mabel rolled her eyes with a groan before concluding;

"Just only use them on food, okay? You're not allowed to stab other people and you're really going to regret it if you stab yourself. Seriously I'm pretty sure Dipper still has marks from all those forks. Uh, if he still has a body. I guess."

Bill's reply was cut off as the two kids heard the grunkles walk in, midway through a conversation.

"-Just a bit more time. I don't **need** to have dinner up here. I'm sure I'll figure it out. Maybe it needs a new order..."

"And **I'm** tell **you** that you can't think properly on an empty stomach. Hey I know I said not to involve the kids in any of this weird stuff but it's a little passed that point now. Would it really hurt you just to ask? Use us as a soundboard or whatever you genius-types call it."

"I don't **need** to ask, **Stan** , I've got it **under control**."

The two kids looked at each other, exchanging a silent agreement. Both of them wanted to eavesdrop on this important-sounding conversation so neither would break the other's cover. The two elders sat down at the table, seemingly moving automatically as they continued their arguement.

"Seriously? You've got it 'under control'? Is that why my grand nephew is still-"

"I know!" Ford snapped, stabbing his food viciously and then waving it around on the end of his fork instead of eating, "You know he's my great nephew too. What do you think I've been doing for the past week? You think I haven't been trying to get him back?!"

"I think you've been your usual selfish self and think you're too high-and-mighty to admit to any of us dumb plebs that you might not have a super tight grip on things and that you maybe need a bit of good old Pines family back up!"

That was the last straw for Mabel - as much as she wanted to hear what they were arguing about she couldn't stand to see her two grunkles arguing. Not properly arguing - she could see that they were a sentence away from merely flinging insults at each other.

"Woah woah woah!" in her peripherals she could see Bill shooting her a dirty look, "Do I spy two grumpy-pants with grumpy faces on their grumpy heads? Do you know what grumpy-pants get to fix up their grumpy-itis?"

Both grunkles - who knew what grumpy-pants got to cure their grumpy-itis - looked to Mabel with a hint of alarm. They raised their hands (both sets of utensils still holding food) in surrender. Ford was the first to halt the automatic reaction;

"Mabel," he said before taking a small bite of food and composing himself, "We are not just being," he made a displeased noise at having to use her silly terminology, " _'Grumpy-pants'_. This is a serious matter. It's-"

He stopped, food almost at his mouth as he stared at Bill as if only just noticing his presence at the dinner table. In a more forced tone, he quickly changed the end of his sentence into;

"-one best discussed elsewhere. Without certain creatures listening in."

Bill looked like he had some smartarse reply to that claim, so Mabel rushed forward to continue the conversation.

"Isn't Bill already pretty involved? I mean, he started it. Maybe he could help?"

The three Pines looked at Bill, who was currently being too enthusiastic about using his knife and fork to dismantle his dinner. Each one gave a shudder and looked away.

"I don't need Bill Cipher's help. I'll do this on my own."

Mabel didn't miss the way Bill looked up with just his eyes and smiled too kindly to be anything but cruel to Stanford. Her grunkle responded by standing sharply from the table, a firm look at Bill badly masking his fright. He ignored his barely-touched food and announced;

"This is a waste of my valuable time. I'm going to go summon Dipper."

He stormed out of the silent room. They waited until they heard the vending machine open and close before resuming conversation.

"Grunkle Stan?" Mabel quietly asked with melancholy, "It's not working, is it?"

"He's trying, Mabel." Stan automatically defended his brother, but when he looked up from his plate he saw her expression and faltered. "Okay. No. Not exactly." He ate what was on his fork, buying time as he thought through what Ford had revealed.

He'd gone downstairs to get Ford for dinner - because family meals together were important. And because he'd wanted to have a word about a demon suddenly being a part of his household. He'd managed to get his 'word' in but had been distracted by Ford's own problems. It had been a disturbing image, actually. Entering the basement to find most of it painted with demonic circles and his brother kneeling over one, muttering consistently in a language that definently wasn't English or Spanish and Stan was reasonably sure it wasn't from Earth at all.

He tried to be dismissive, trying to downplay it. As great a conman as he was, he couldn't lie to Mabel's face. Not about something directly concerning her twin brother. He busied himself with eating and spoke around bites;

"He's trying to summon Dipper. But the circle he's using isn't working properly. Or at all. But don't worry about it, pumpkin," He stared down at his plate before forcing his most charismatic smile onto his face and looking up at his grand-niece, "Your Grunkle Ford's a smart guy. He'll figure it out."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More of a bridging chapter than anything. We need this to introduce some ideas next chapter, but I got over my minimum wordcount and decided it was about time I posted something again. Sorry for the wait :3
> 
> Stanley does the family thing and we get a hint that everything still isn't as it should be.
> 
> Bill is remaining suspiciously quiet. Sometimes it's more fun to watch people drive themselves off of cliffs, y'know?


	8. Down By the Pothole

Stanford Pines sat in the highest basement room out of all three basement rooms. This was the Lab proper - the one with the most general machines and where most of his work was stored. It was close enough to the ground floor that errant children could accidentally fall into it. It was the floor in which he'd researched and theorised on how to reverse whatever spell Cipher had done - the one that had put him in the third dimension and had put Dipper in the second dimension. Hopefully the second dimension and no where worse.

Now he sat in this room in this floor because he was trying to figure out how to summon the pseudo-demon-Dipper. He'd assumed it was going to be straight forward; he knew how to summon Bill Cipher, after all. So the same principle applied. But he'd thought it only prudent to, first, take some safety measures. Like a binding circle around where he'd summon Dipper, just in case.

He wasn't concerned with what Dipper would do, not really. But when experimenting with summonings he knew just how horribly wrong everything could go. He didn't know if the transformation from human to dream demon might've done something to Dipper or to the boy's mind. He might not even recognise his grunkle when summoned. There was no need to take risks with this.

But once all the precautions where laid out, he'd assumed he just needed to layout the candles and speak the usual phrases. He'd known as soon as the last syllable fell from his lips that it hadn't worked. He wasn't in the Dreamscape and Dipper wasn't before him.

But that was fine. Ford knew a multitude of ways to summon Bill. He'd just go down the list from most to least likely to work until he summoned Dipper.

He'd dragged a rug with Bill's form up to his workspace, placing candles around that. And it hadn't worked.

He'd used different summoning phrases - at least 8 others. None had made a difference.

He'd meditated, trying to place himself in the dreamscape. He'd managed, but he hadn't found Dipper.

After dinner he'd forced himself into slumber and tried to search for Dipper in his own semi-lucid dream. And that hadn't worked.

Finally, in desperation, he'd drawn the prophetic Cipher Wheel, trying to lure Dipper in with the ten symbols. Dipper was a part of it, he knew. He thought that if all else failed this last chance would surely work. But no matter how he drew the symbols or in what order he put them, it didn't work.

Stanford had hit a dead end.

* * *

  


"Okay, so, I think the most-most important thing for you to learn next is how the art of conversation. Judging by your work yesterday, you are not ready to be talking with innocent civilians."

Mabel stood, pacing a little, in front of Bill who sat on her bed. She'd let him pick out his own outfit this morning and was only regretting the choice a tiny bit. Over one of Dipper's shirts, he was wearing her Meow-Wow sweater. This part she approved of. She was less approving of his decision to pair said sweater with her lime-patterned lime-green skirt. Purple and green were not an acceptable combination. But she wanted him to start making his own fashion choices, so she let the combination stand.

Bill at very least appeared to be listening to her as so told him what they'd be doing for the day. Luckily, today was only a half-day at the Mystery Shack. There weren't any tours and it was one of the days that they didn't expect many customers so Stan only kept the Shack officially open for the first half of the day and didn't make the kids work for those few hours.

"Your goal today is! Learn how to talk to people without making them run away screaming and, maybe, make a friend!"

She was really hoping that last part would come true. In fact, if she was being perfectly honest with herself, she was hoping for the latter a bit more than the former. It's not like **she** had a great track record with not making people run away screaming, anyway. But there was a difference between how people reacted to her and how they had reacted to Bill yesterday. She just freaked them out - he seemed to make them actually afraid. That would have to change, but making a friend could very well hope.

She just thought it would be sweet to see Bill make a proper friend.

Downstairs, the Shack was mostly empty. Stan was... out, Ford was in the basement and there weren't any customers which meant that the Gift Shop contained only Wendy (reading a magazine at the cash register) and Soos (sweeping, accidentally knocking things over and then sweeping those things up).

"Let's start on Soos. He's a pretty friendly guy."

"So what are you expecting me to do, Shooting Star?"

He was mostly going along with this because it sounded sort of like a scheme and because, well, what was the alternative for him? He had tried to run late last night - Mabel had flown out of nowhere and tackled him to the ground. And that had hurt a lot more now that he was a mortal human body. So it wasn't like he could just flee and start havoc elsewhere. Even if he did flee, what could he do in this tiny human body? He had none of his old body and his knowledge had downgraded so much it felt like he didn't know anything at all.

The frustrating fact was, his best chance of getting any of his old power back would be to stay in Gravity Falls and to stay near the Pines family. So he let the time pass by humouring Shooting Star.

Besides yesterday had felt... unfulfilling. Normally the chaos he'd created with mere words would've been incredibly entertaining. He enjoyed making any creature's word horrifically surreal and, even if he didn't have access to cosmic knowledge any more, he was still very good at bluffing and he remembered the **types** of things to say to people to make their skin metaphorically crawl. But yesterday... Oh he'd laughed at them, certainly. But there was a twinge of something else that turned his humour sour. The twinge was an alien feeling and he thought, maybe, that going through these exercises Mabel set for him might shed some light on the matter.

"We'll walk up to Soos and make small talk. I'll guide you on the sort of things to say, so don't worry about making a mistake."

"Small talk? Question Mark doesn't look like he's capable of small anything."

She gave him a shove and he only just managed to keep his balance. Gravity was a very knew and not at all welcome phenomena to him.

"Number one - don't say things like that! That's mean and can hurt people's feeling. You're not meant to hurt people's feelings when you're having a conversation. And small talk isn't literally small it's just, uh... talking about nothing? Nothing important, anyway. It's like talking about weather or what your day was like or where ever the conversation took you!"

Bill nodded uncomprehendingly as they approached Soos.

"Hi Soos!" Mabel nudged him.

"Hi Question Mark."

"Hey dudes. Whatcha up to?" he stopped sweeping, instead leaning on his broom. Bill tried to think of what Mabel had said about 'small talk'.

"Making weather." He glanced at her - was that a thing humans did? She didn't look enthused. "Uh, nothing."

She'd said that, right? Small talk was talking about nothing. That seemed like a fair answer.

"Hey, sounds cool. You twose gonna hang around the Shack? Or have you got some fantastical adventure to get going on?"

Bill's face gave an involuntary twitch, which was a strange sensation. He wasn't at all used to having subconscious processes like 'automatic reactions' or 'breathing' or 'auto-repository functions'. The human body did all too much on its own, according to him. The face twitch, at least, he recognised as his face betraying his emotions. Which it really didn't need to do, since his mouth was going to do that in just a second. Without much thinking about it, Bill replied:

"What do you care? It's not like we'd bring you along."

Next to him, Mabel's face turned to look at him. Soos' casual lean seemed to falter and the broom popped out from under his arm. It flung backwards and crashed into one of the displays. The handyman shook off whatever shock he was feeling and chuckled.

"Heh heh, like, oops." and he begun to use the very same broom to clean up.

"See?" continued Bill while his instructor frantically shook her head next to him, "Why would we bring a clumsy buffoon like you along? Except - ha ha! - as bait!"

This was fun! Or that's what Bill was mentally repeating to himself as he formed sentences, anyway. He had the same sensation as yesterday in the pit of his stomach. This was fun - it genuinely was. But it wasn't **just** fun and that was making it less fun overall. Instead of Soos' meek and upset body language being encouragement, it was now a turn-off. It set off warning bells in his mind telling him that this was too much and that he was going too far and that there was no good reason for this.

Which was the most confusing thing. Of course there was a reason - the reason was _'This is going to be hilarious!'_ and how dare his brain demand any further reason.

At least he had a pretty good line up, especially for how much he had to work with. He couldn't even see the man's future anymore. But he did have a complete set of memories when it came to each of the Pines' Household - employees included. And he had been paying attention to what each Pines and pseudo-Pines said to each other yesterday. It was more information than he bet they suspected.

"Face it, wide-and-softie, you're stuck in this dead end, low level job and you can't even get **that** right. No wonder Stanley never gives you a raise! He's a smart guy and he can see you're just not worth it. Y'know, everyone would be better off if you just wandered off into the forest and never came back. That way no one would have to put up with your constant mistakes."

Bill waited with a grin, wanting to see what barb would strike back.

"Uncool dude-" Soos gave a large sniff, "Super uncool." he concluded before the sniffling over took him and he fled from the Shack.

Ah, that's right, Bill's almost forgotten. Question Mark may be worth being called 'opposition' when he was with the Mystery Twins, but on his own and off his guard he wasn't much of an opponent.

He watched the man flee out the door, a small frown settling onto his face. He wasn't actually sure why he was frowning - it had just seemed to happen automatically. Something about seeing the grown man - no, the innocent man - tear up like he had had struck him as off. Something inside him was registering an error message.

"Bill!" came Shooting Star's shriek from beside him.

He glanced over to catch her furious look. She pointed a shaking finger at him before throwing her hands up with a disgusted sound.

"I'll deal with you later." she turned and ran out the door, "Soos! Soos wait come back!"

Which, for the first time since The Incident, left him alone.

Except for the red-head lounging at the register, of course. He noticed, now that he'd looked over at her, that she was watching him over the top of her magazine. Her eyes didn't look friendly. He remained unintimidated, until he recalled the physical limitations of his new form. He was actually quite small and relatively weak. She was tall and had the muscles of a teenage lumberjack. Bill looked away.

"Y'know." came a suspiciously casual drawl, "There's not many people that mess with the Pines family."

Bill looked back at her, the magazine now raised to it's previous face-covering height. He responded, injecting as much bravado into his voice was possible;

"I'm not many people."

She carried on as if he hadn't spoken.

"And there's actually a good reason for that. Y'see - Stan? Not a great employer. Not even an honest person, actually. But he's got this... thing about him. Doesn't matter how he treats ya - he makes you want to be loyal anyway."

He started to speak, to make some disparaging comment about all this, but Wendy kept on speaking, not even raising her voice.

"Not just loyal to him, but loyal to the whole family." she put down her magazine and look him in the eye. He suppressed the chill that wanted to race down his spine. "And that's why not many people mess with us. Because you mess with one of us then you mess with **all** of us. And absolutely no one wants the entire Pines' clan on their back. Because we'd do **anything** for one of our own."

The gift shop door slammed open and Bill felt his muscles jump involuntarily. Mabel stood there, ushering Soos back inside through the shop and into the lounge room, sparing only a moment to glare at Bill. By the time he looked back at Wendy, she had her magazine up again, looking like she hadn't moved an inch. His brow furrowed, making his still present frown look more concerned.

Mabel was back a moment later.

"You!" she exclaimed as she marched over, "That was not what I taught you at all! No insults, no jabs and definitely no bringing up people's deepest darkest fears that somehow only you know about!"

Bill smiled, his heart not really in it, and merely responded, "Sorry Shooting Star. Guess I'm just a hopeless case." he shrugged, adding insult to the indirect jab.

An alarm went off behind them from near the register. Both kids looked, seeing Wendy throw her magazine down with a grin. Bill hid his shudder again as he noticed her grin settling on him - he did not notice the mobile phone loosely held in her hand.

"You free Mabel? Me and the gang where going to go down to the Pothole - it's this wicked lake out in the forest, near some cliffs. You could grab your bathers and join us. Oh-" she added in a nonchalant manner, "And your friend could come too, I guess."

Bill immediately narrowed his eyes. There was nothing nonchalant about her nonchalant manner. But before he could protest, Mabel answered for him.

"Awesome! Yeah, we'll come! Hang on, just gotta-"

"Yeah, yeah," Wendy waved her off, "Thompson isn't here yet. You got til you can hear his clapped-out van."

And with that, Mabel grabbed his wrist and tore off upstairs.

* * *

  


A little known fact was just how attached to the Pines family Wendy was. Working at the Mystery Shack had been her first job but it hadn't been her only job. In fact the only reason it had been her first job was because Stan apparently didn't care about petty things like 'child labour laws' and had hired her when she was a year or two underage. She'd unofficially quit a few months later when her father had packed her family off to a month-long lumberjack convention thing and she'd belatedly realised that she hadn't told Stan before she left.

Once she came of legal age to work, she'd passed through almost every job in Gravity Falls available to her. She hadn't kept any job for more than a month. Her employers all had something to say about her. Either she wasn't disciplined her she had no customer etiquette or she left early or showed up late or was unreliable or- the list went on.

Of course it was around the time she'd exhausted all her options that her dad dropped the bombshell on her. Either she had some commitment tying her to Gravity Falls (friends, apparently, didn't count) or she was being sent off up North. To 'build character'. Which meant she suddenly needed a job and she needed one fast. But no where would take her back.

She'd gloomily wandered until her feet had led her to the tourist trap Mystery Shack. It looked much how she remembered it, though that day had apparently been a rather busy one. She'd mingled with the tourists, one of the very few townsfolk in the shop, and had watched the shop practically run itself. There was the handyman, off in one corner whistling a tune to himself as if the place wasn't packed full of customers, working away on some over-head pipe. And dashing between customers and the register was Mr. Mystery himself - his suit charming yet costumey, his smile greedy yet enthusiastic. She'd been shuffled over to the register by the ebb of the crowd and had been about to try and move to the exit when Mr. Mystery had given an overhead shout -

"Hey, you! Corduroy! Get back on the registers. These suck- ah..! **tourists** aren't going to... _something-nicer-than-'fleece'_ themselves, you know."

And just like that she'd somehow found herself behind the register.

To this day, she didn't know if Stan had just taken advantage of her being in the shop or if he'd somehow planned it for her benefit but she wasn't looking the gift horse in his mouth. What she does know is that it's the only job where she could pretty much just be herself - relax on the job, insult customers who weren't worth her time - and not get fired for it. Not even get a pay decrease for it.

It was not the last thing she owed Stan and the Pines' but it was the first on her list.

Which was why, after seeing the new boy's 'interaction' with Soos, she'd decided to text the gang with a plan. A plan that started at the Pothole.

* * *

  


Thompson pulled up not too close to the edge of a lake. It wasn't huge, but it would be difficult to merely doggy-paddle across it's diameter. The lake was half surrounded by trees, and half surrounded by a cliff face which hung out over the middle of the lake.

"And the reason we call it the Pothole," Robbie was explaining in only a slightly pompous tone, "Is because it's, like, stupid deep. There's no gradual beach - it just super-suddenly drops off."

"Which makes it perfect for diving." interrupted Wendy as she pointed up to the cliff.

"Woah boy, well, count me out. I think I'm just gonna swim around from down here." Mabel replied. She was almost getting vertigo just from _imagining_ standing on top of the cliff. "Come on!" she gestured to Bill.

She was in her usual one-piece swimmers but Bill she'd had to dress in Dipper's usual shorts-and-shirt combination since each twin had only brought one pair of swimsuits each. Despite her efforts, he'd failed to remove his bow-tie or top hat for this excursion. He'd been unusually quiet in the van and she was hoping she hadn't been to harsh on him. No - of course she hadn't been too harsh. He'd been **so mean** to Soos and that was something he needed to be told. And firmly. She sat at the edge of the lake and invited him to sit next to her. She had a feeling she was going to have to have a conversation about what water was. If not a conversation about swimming. There was a splash not far from her as Robbie dived in, Tambry going to sit at the edge of the lake near him. The rest settled around the edge or in the lake.

Predictably, Bill seemed apprehensive about the water. He'd glanced around - casually enough that she wouldn't have thought much of it had she not been looking. He seemed reassured that no one else was concerned about the lake and had sat down beside her and mimicked her pose, dropping his legs into the water. This turned out to be a mistake on his part as a second later he let out a strangled shriek and rolled backwards. From one side, someone started laughing and a few others joined in. Wendy called out as Mabel was crawling over to check Bill was fine.

"Never been swimming before? Don't worry, dude, I am a licensed life guard. No accidents under my watch."

There was the sound of Lee or Nate high-fiving her for this, but Mabel filtered it out in exchange for concentrating on Bill. He did not look happy.

"What in the unpronounceable outer gods' names was that? Huh-" he blinked, side-tracked, "Oh **now** I understand that. You humans really can't pronounce those names." he wasn't side-tracked for long and soon sent her a stern look, demanding an explanation.

She wondered where to start. "That was water. You know water - you used it to shower and wash your hands and stuff."

"That water was pleasant and warm. That-" he pointed an accusing finger at the lake, "Is freezing."

"Uh, yeah. Water out in nature is usually a lot colder than what's in the house. I think it's just 'cause it's outside?"

They spent a few moments going over the concept of an outdoor lake, getting Bill used to the idea of what it would be like to be submerged in a non-gaseous substance. And then a few more moments slowly getting some practical experience; teaching him how to tread water and doggy paddle. Just as she thought Bill was getting the hang of it, a chant started up from the shore.

Th boys where all lined up, some fist pumping the air and others just miming banging a table with their fists in front of them. All of them, she realised as the chant grew louder, where making rough 'woof'ing sounds. Their target, she figured out, was Bill and his newly learnt doggy paddle. This realisation seemed to occur to Bill too as the chant reached a crescendo and he stopped his paddle to look at them in confusion. The chant escalated fast and soon dissolved into helpless laughter and Nate egging on -

"Naw, come on, keep going! Padd-el, padd-el, padd-el!"

The new chant was soon picked up and the previous shaking of fists resumed. Mabel realised what was going on and stepped in.

"Hey! He's never been swimming before! Did any of **you** do any better your first time?"

The boys hushed, appropriately admonished, one calling out an apology to her. She looked back at Bill (who was approaching the shore) to see if he'd realised what they were doing. She couldn't be sure, his expressions still a little off to her, but she suspected he knew. They'd been teasing him. Friendly teasing, to be sure, but teasing him nonetheless. This wasn't a new thing, exactly. Teasing each other just seemed to be a part of the group's dynamic - it wasn't unlike how she and Dipper teased each other. In fact the group had teased even her and Dipper before. She just wasn't sure Bill would understand it was a friendly thing, instead of a mean one. She knew the line between the two was rather fine.

Bill pulled himself out of the lake, sitting at the edge, and she joined him.

"Hey, I know! How about we practice more conversation! Go up to some of the others and strike up a conversation. You can just open with something like... 'How are you going?' or! Ooo! Ooo! Even better! You could try compliment them! Just pick something about what they're doing or what they're wearing and say it looks nice or seems cool."

She beamed at the idea. Bill looked at her suspiciously before all expression dropped into a relaxed, casual look. He shrugged.

"Sure Mabel, whatever." and with that he walked off to approach Thompson.

She slipped back into the lake and swam about in small circles, staying occupied while she surreptitiously watched Bill.

Something became apparent not long after he'd moved on from Thompson. It wasn't something bad, exactly. In fact it might actually be a good thing. The teens weren't treating Bill all that differently from how they treated her or her brother. Not until **he** seemed to treat them differently first. She could see it on their faces when she wasn't close enough to actually hear there words. The thing was, Bill could start out well - he'd make an appropriate greeting and get a conversation going. But he'd lapse into old habits - an insult passing his lips, a compliment turned sour by his tone, a laugh without sincerity. And when that happened...

She actually missed it the first few times. Because the first few times it happened, it happened to Tambry and Tambry would just give him the cold shoulder and return to her phone. Mabel really started noticing it when Bill started truly trying to get a rise out of the texting girl and she'd said in a bored tone something about how he was like her little cousins except that they weren't allowed to talk to her any more.

Tambry proved to be the rule, not the exception. Whenever Bill crossed the line from jovial into cruelty, none of the teens would take it. Either they could dish it back just as hard with barely a split second to think or they brushed him off like he was genuinely nothing. Bill looked confused and frustrated at the treatment, but she didn't really know what to do about it. The rest weren't being cruel - not really. They just weren't putting up with his more anti-social behaviour. If he just stopped insulting them it would all be fine.

Then Robbie stood on a tree stump and gave a rallying cry;

"Yo---! Who wants to come do a Pot Dive?!"

A unanimous cheer rose from the group. Mabel looked up at the cliffs with a ghost of a grin. She'd have loved to not long ago, but this Summer had turned her off of heights. Tambry, too, was staying down below but paused her texting to give Robbie a kiss and wish him luck. Once they could see the group up the top, she put her phone away altogether.

Mabel did not miss Bill, determinedly going to join the group in walking up to the top of the cliff. She guessed his usual state of floating made him unafraid of heights. She made no move to stop him - if he wanted to have fun jumping off of the giant rock then she wouldn't stop him. But she did make sure to finally remove his hat and bow-tie - explaining that both would be a hazard at worst and merely lost at best. The latter seemed to be the more convincing argument. She joined Tambry in cheering from the lakeside as the small figures of the rest appeared near the cliff top.

* * *

  


The older - well, physically older, since he was a good few millennia older than anyone here - kids where explaining the ground rules for the 'Pot Dives'. It turned out that the ridiculous deepness of the lake made it perfect for diving into - the cliff faces surrounding one half of the lake made the perfect diving platform. But it was still dangerous.

One of the teens - Lee, he thought? - had questioned if Bill really wanted to be up here. Just as Bill thought he might gracefully back out of it, Robbie (a name he'd memorised after recognising his now discarded hoodie) had made some comment about how he was 'too small' and would surely chicken out. He'd been punched for this comment, but it had strengthened Bill's resolve anyway. He had noticed what was happening, when he'd been trying out 'talking' on them. No matter how he pushed or prodded or laughed, they didn't break. They didn't even show any signs of breaking. It was like they just didn't care - they didn't care about his insults or his spooky predictions or any of it. One of them had even flat out admitted something he'd tried to cruelly hint at, merely asking him an insolent _"So?"_

It had been annoying, at first, then frustrating and finally it had just been... embarrassing. He was doing everything he could with his limited brain power and nothing was working. So now he was going to regain some face and make this jump. It shouldn't be too hard, he reasoned. He just had to jump over the edge of the cliff and let gravity man-handle his new body. The rules helped assuage any other concerns.

The rules where that you weren't to push anyone around up on the cliff ( _"That goes for you two especially, Lee, Nate."_ ), only one person across the line at a time (the cliff top had a line carved into, marking out a meter or two from the edge), the next person wasn't allowed to jump before they got the 'all clear' from below and Wendy went first or second. Because if something went wrong with one of the others, she was the one with the training to help.

Wendy jumped, throwing a wink at the others as she gracefully dived off. Lee followed, pursued by Robbie throwing himself off in a bomb dive. The last of them hung around until the first three got back, Nate wanting to go next but refusing to jump until Lee was back. Thompson, Bill noticed, wasn't in much of a hurry to jump at all.

Nate looked ready to jump before he was interrupted by Robbie - who was looking at Thompson.

"Hey Thompson, why don't you show the new kid your 'signature move'?"

This request was met with a spattering of laughter.

"Aw, come on guys, don't make me do that." Thompson was interrupted by a few encouragements, but continued to protest, "Guys, seriously, it really hurts."

Nate had wandered back to their side of the line and, presumably prompt by Bill's expression, leaned over to explain;

"First time we got up here, we dared someone to do a belly flop into the lake. Thompson was the only one game enough to do it." Nate grinned down at him, "Fricking legend, right?"

There was another chant emerging, this time calling for Thompson to "Pot- Belly! Pot- Belly! Pot- Belly!"

Mabel had explained to him what a belly flop was, as part of an explanation on a variety of dives. It had sounded simple enough and he couldn't think of why she'd told him it was _'probably best to to try that one too soon'_. It didn't sound difficult - you just flung yourself off, belly down, and splayed your arms and legs out.

The chant for 'Pot Belly' continued as Bill made his way over the line. He stood almost at the edge before the chant cut off. There was no encouragement or discouragement, and he realised they didn't know what he was going to do. Borrowing a few gestures and mannerisms that he'd seen from them, Bill looked back at them and thrust a fist into the air with a cry of;

"Pot Belly!"

There was a quite moment before a cheer erupted, someone shouting; "Woah, you're crazy little dude!" in an appreciative tone.

Bill took a look over the edge. It was a clear drop down and, to him, the height wasn't anything impressive. He bent his legs, testing them, and promptly flung himself of the cliff into a belly flop on the lake's surface far below.

* * *

  


They went home, after that.

* * *

  


Bill wished Mabel would stop pointing out that she'd 'told him so' but more than that he wished his **entire front half** would stop stinging.

It was not a fun way to find out why it was probably a good idea to **not** try a belly flop dive first.

But when the pain eventually went down (or turned into a background throb, he wasn't sure which) he almost wished it would come back. The pain was a distraction, at least, from reviewing the day. Because looking back on it, something had gone incredibly wrong. Sure it had been annoying that none of his insults had stuck, but their insults had hurt even more than that. The culmative effect had driven him to make the incredibly painful dive off of the cliff and that just **didn't make sense**.

How could mere human teenagers get to him that much? The only explanation was something Mabel had said while she was tending to his wounds - that he should 'Just Say En-Oh to Peer Pressure'. She'd started to falteringly explain what peer pressure was, but he'd waved her off. He knew what peer pressure was. It was a tool he'd used before; using the human's need to be part of a collective to force them to do things, all in the name of conforming to The Group. But it was such a **human** instinct.

He hadn't fallen prey to that, exactly. His 'peers' hadn't been pressuring him, after all. They'd been concentrating on Thompson. But after getting no rises and no true responses from them all day, he'd felt that drive to prove himself. To prove he wasn't someone to be trifled with, that he was still formidable.

But had had he felt the need to prove himself to those hormone-high sacks of water and bones? The answer came to him almost immediately, but he smothered it before it could articulate itself.

He didn't want to hear the extent of the transformation. He was going to figure out how to reverse this and then he'd stop feeling these weird things and then he was going to tear this stupid dimension apart.

He broke from his musings as Mabel lead them downstairs for food. Stanley and Stanford where sitting at the table - and both looked tense. As they entered, the two grunkles looked up. There was silence.

"You gonna tell 'em, or am I?" Stan's gruff voice asked, looking at Ford.

For his part, Ford merely gave a weary sigh and shook his head. Stan rolled his eyes, an unpleasant look on his face as he turned back to the pair of them. Mabel led them further into the kitchen. She sounded resigned as she said more than asked;

"It's Dipper, isn't it?"

"According to Ford, nothing's working. He can't summon your brother. He said he can try make something from scratch - which he's going to -" Ford seemed to shrink at the angry words, "But that's gonna take longer. A lot longer. And, well..."

There was quiet, broken by a light sniffling from Mabel's direction. With renewed determination, Bill moved around so that he stood closer to Ford. In a voice that came out more angry than he'd expected, he interrogated the scientist.

"What do you mean you can't summon him? Did you use the septagram nightmare circle?"

Ford scowled at him and snapped back in a biting tone; "Of course I did. It was the first thing I tried."

He'd barely finished the sentence before Bill asked; "And the meditative circle?"

"Yes."

"The dimension dismantling ritual?"

"Yes."

"The guided summoning circle?"

"Yes." Ford was sounding more annoyed now.

"The third summoning circle _'which must not be named at all costs'_?"

"Yes!"

Bill opened his mouth to ask after another method, but Ford cut him off this time.

"Yes, yes, yes and **yes**! I tried all of it, Bill! I tried entering the Dreamscape - **yes** in multiple ways - I tried every method of summoning you I knew, I tried every method of merely contacting you. I tried that very first Chant to summon you from the Nightmare Realm. I even offered myself up as a vessel! And nothing stuck. Nothing worked!"

An angry frown graced Bill's young features. This was not good.

"And the Wheel?"

Ford stiffened slightly. Of course, Ford thought it was a secret he needed to keep, no matter that Bill was the one who'd left the clues to The Wheel in the first place. Bill continued to give him a hard stare, until he cracked.

"I tried that too." After a pause he said what everyone was now expecting, "Nothing."

There was a tense and heavy silence in the room. No one knew what to say. There was nothing they could do - if they couldn't find Dipper then they couldn't get their relative back. If they couldn't find Dipper, there was no way to get Bill back to his original demonic form. They had to find Dipper but if they just couldn't...

Mabel's voice shattered the silence and, in this atmosphere, filled the room. It was a strange effect - her voice was quiet and directed at the floor but it still reached all their ears with crystal clarity.

"Grunkle Ford...?" she trailed off, not as if unsure but merely as if depressed, "You said you tried summoning him - summoning Bill."

When enough of a pause passed that made it clear she wasn't going to continue on her own, Ford replied;

"I did. I really did." he sounded like he was trying to talk reason into her. Mabel continued in the same tone.

"But you're **not** summoning him." she looked up, revealing a firecely determined look on her face. Her soft and quiet tone rose into something firm as she spoke, "You're summoning **Dipper**. Doesn't that mean you'll have to do something different? I didn't turn Dipper into Bill - I mean look!" she gestured to Bill himself, "Bill's not **Dipper** he's just **human**. You can't just summon Bill - you've got to summon Dipper the Dream Demon."

Bill watched her with widening eyes, but in his peripherals he saw Ford shaking his head.

"Mabel, it's not that simple. If I'm summoning Dipper as a completely new entity then I have to either create or, more accurately, discover a completely original ritual. And that's what I'm going to do, but, like Stanley said..."

"No." Bill's voice cut in almost before he realised he'd decided to speak. "You're both idiots."

Every Pines' looked at him sharply and with little patience, so he hurried on;

"I mean you're both **right** but you're both wrong. Mabel's right - you can't use my usual methods because Pine Tree isn't me. But Sixer, you don't need a whole new ritual. He might not be me exactly but he is me approximately. He's filling my role. You need to try again. Try the Wheel again. Anything like me is going to sit up and notice that. Maybe if you where _a little more patient_..."

Ford started to snarl something before Mabel cut him off.

"What is this 'Wheel' anyway?"

Ford looked like he might continue his snarl, but turned to Mabel instead.

"It's... well, it might be easier if I just show you." retrieving drawing supplies, he drew The Wheel and laid it out on the table. "The Wheel is a zodiac of ten symbols. Each symbol, well," he glanced up at Bill before concentrating on the drawing again, "Let's just say it's very powerful - powerful enough that even a Dream Demon has to notice it. Theoretically, the Wheel can be used as a gateway for it's demon - Bill Cipher. Though in this case we're using it for Dipper. It will have some... interesting side-effects on reality while it's active but it should be an irresistible lure."

"Except that Pine Tree resisted it." Bill pointed out, earning a glare from Ford.

The other two weren't paying attention much attention to them, though. Stan pointed to the centre of the wheel where their was a pictogram of a one eyed triangle adorned with a bow-tie and a top hat.

"This is meant to be him," he gestured, "When he was a demon, right?"

Ford nodded and Mabel drew a glittery gel pen from some mysterious place like her pocket.

"Oh, well, duh!" she said, sounding relieved.

She leaned over the drawing, making some amendments. When she was down she stood back and the other three studied what she'd done. She hadn't done much - merely used her bright pen to draw over two of the symbols. She'd drawn a pine tree over the centre pictogram and over the pine tree she'd drawn a simple cyclops triangle. They looked up at her.

"Well Dipper's the pine tree, right?" she asked rhetorically, pointing to where the she'd drawn over said pine tree. "I mean, he's been wearing that hat all Summer and Bill calls him that all the time. And like Grunkle Stan said - that's Bill in the centre. So the first wheel would summon Bill. But if you just switch their symbols around..."

Her confidence wavered and she looked between the three of them, her gaze finally settling on Stanford. In a sensitive ton, she asked;

"It could work, right?"

Ford looked concerned, but managed to look away from the expectant young girl for long enough to catch Bill's eyes. Bill shrugged helplessly before admitting;

"It's a solid theory, Sixer. But I gotta be honest with ya - this stuff is all pretty rare and it's never happened to someone as powerful or unique as me."

"But it could work?" the other older twin spoke up, keeping them on track.

Bill nodded. "It could work."

They all turned to Ford as he muttered to himself, "It could work."

And with that utterance, he stood and strode off back to the basements. But this time, the other three followed. They were all desperate to see this through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill learns more about being human, Wendy reflects on her past and finally we get some actual headway in getting Dipper back! I wonder what he's been up to all this time anyway...
> 
> Also I'm going to comment here (more for my sake than anything) that argh argh yes I did one of the biggest literary sins. I 'Told' instead of 'Show'. I had a poor writer's block when trying to actually think of how the conversations between Bill and the teens would go and decided to describe it via Mabel rather than suffer through my block. Hopefully it's not too jarring. I find it's a part of my style, somewhat, and I'm still not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.
> 
> Anyway, hope you guys liked it!


	9. The Summoning

The group walked through the house, into the basement elevator. The elevator stopped at the first floor, revealing the lab in disarray. They made to follow Ford as he stepped out but he held up a hand, muttered something to halt them, and they remained in the box, Stan's finger holding the doors open. He moved about, collecting what he needed for the Wheel before returning to the elevator.

They continued their descent.

It was quiet, but not silent. Ford muttered to himself almost constantly, as if he was having too many thoughts to contain within him. It disturbed Mabel, but the other two looked like this was an everyday occurrence. She guessed this was a childhood habit of Ford's and that was why Stan wasn't perturbed by it but as for why Bill was so comfortable with it... she could only guess that he was a lot less spooked than other humans, by virtue of being an ex-demon. Most of what he said was too quiet for her to hear but when he glanced up, looking between her and Grunkle Stan, she heard a snippet of his thought;

"...Maybe if ... finding all ... already have three ... Activate the symb..."

The half-thoughts didn't make much sense to her and she didn't have long to ponder the words as soon enough the elevator gave a 'ding' sound and opened to reveal the bottom-most basement level. The level they'd descended to back when she and Dipper hadn't known who Grunkle Stan was. The level that had once held an interdimensional portal.

The portal was now gone and the space mostly empty. A few machines gave off a faint light and with the light she could remnants of ritual circles on the floor, all of them with some kind of line - a smudge or a crack - through them. The remains of Grunkle Ford's previous attempts at summoning Dipper, she guessed. The three of them stood back as Stanford stalked forward into the space, finding a blank piece of floor to use. They waited.

* * *

Stanford drew the inner circle and around that he drew the symbols he had committed to memory. Internally, he muttered what names he suspected connected with them. His own six-fingered hand, Stanley's fez-embroidered fish, glasses which he suspected Fiddleford could fill the roll of, Soos' question mark and Mabel's own shooting star. He'd glimpsed the other symbols on residents of Gravity Falls but most he didn't know the name of. And still he couldn't associate every symbol with someone. He hesitated, about to draw the pine tree on instinct, but remembering at the last second that he was meant to switch out that symbol. He drew the simple pictogram Mabel had drawn earlier - a triangle with one eye, missing it's usual limbs or bowtie or top hat.

Around the symbols he drew a larger circle, reining it all in, and then he drew lines to block the symbols off from one another. He stepped over the ring of pictures so as to draw the centre symbol, the pine tree that would catch Dipper's attention. He found himself hesitating again, though this time it was not out of a stalled remembrance for what he was meant to draw. Ford wasn't concerned about summoning who was now a Dream Demon. He should still be Dipper, after all, and more than that the bottom basement level was very well warded against dream demons especially. But he found himself unsure of how he should draw the pictogram. If he drew it wrong, it might attract a shade of Dipper instead, or may attract only a segment of Dipper. Both would be a problem and both would break his relatives' hearts to see.

He decided, one part whim and one part instinct, to draw the Pine Tree in the two things he couldn't even imagine the boy without. He draw Dipper's vest and then drew a little trucker's cap before he filled the space in between with the pine tree symbol. For the final touch he drew a single eye and then he stepped out and away from the circle, hoping it would work.

He stepped out of the centre circle, standing on his own six-fingered palm symbol, and then moved to step out of the outer circle. A pressure at his back stopped him. He was trapped.

* * *

Bill stood slightly apart from the Pines, watching with studious intent. It niggled at his mind, watching the ritual unfold, like it was something he'd seen before or like he'd seen something similar before but that his mind just couldn't recall the memory. Which was true, technically, he'd lost so many memories when he'd been transformed into a mortal human body. He probably had seen scenes similar to this one many times before but he simply lacked the ability to recall those memories.

He still recognised each symbol, though, and even better he could remember the symbols living versions. He had a name and a face for every symbol drawn. He was still waiting to see what he could do with that knowledge - he'd wait until Ford out worn out his usefulness before he moved onto the pictograms. He silently approved of the artistic choices in the new circle, making his own symbol more simple and detailing the Pine Tree in turn.

Then Ford finished drawing the eye, and Bill felt the world change.

With a glance to his side he saw that the two observing Pines hadn't reacted - Ford didn't seem to be reacting either, aside from backing out of the circle. They hadn't noticed anything, either too human or two out-of-tune with the supernatural to notice the way reality shifted. Stanford noticed soon enough, though, as a navy blue shimmer of light burst into existence where his back hit the outer line of the circle.

He whirled around, looking at the invisible barrier with horror, intrigue and a bit of panic. Beside Bill, the other Pines' started forward, the elder calling out his brother's name. The trapped Pines held up his hands in a placating manner, telling them it was fine and that everything was working fine, and then he collapsed.

* * *

"Stanford!" Stan's shout matched Mabel's shriek but only he dashed forward.

He reached the edge of the Wheel's circle and took his default approach to any problem - he punched it. The invisible barrier was more solid than steel but, thankfully, wasn't the same consistency. Still, it stung his knuckles. It wasn't a deterrent, however. Stan kept pounding at the barrier, turning patches of it navy blue for a moment before the effect faded away. His fists would be bruised, probably with countless micro-fractures by tomorrow morning, but it was worth it.

He shouted again: "Stanford!"

His strength was flagging, the adrenaline not quite enough to keep his old body from continuing a task he knew was futile. He gave the barrier another strong bang, trying to ignore the sound of his great niece sniffling behind him and the drone of that demon-boy telling him to give up. He would never give up - not when his family was at stake.

His fist slipped on the barrier and his feet lost their stance, causing him to slip down onto one knee. He fell heavy and felt a feeble second wind come on. He pounded a few more times and, as he felt his eyes prick with the threat of tears, he whispered through the barrier.

"I can't loose you again."

He closed his eyes shut, hating the world, hating demons, hating the paranormal and hating himself for allowing this all to get this bad. How could he have let this happen? Why hadn't he put a stop to all this? Through his melancholy thoughts, a small voice whispered back:

"Grunkle Stan?"

* * *

The Nightmare Realm was difficult to describe. Or, it was difficult to describe with his human vocabulary and terms and ideas. As time (or what was approximately time) passed, he found more and more appropriate ways to describe the Realm with demonic words and terms and concepts. It was the realm that those things had developed from so of course they were uniquely equipped to describe the place.

But the more Dipper thought in those words, the harder it was to remember the Mystery Shack. Sometimes he forgot why but always he knew that the Mystery Shack was important to remember. He was meant to think human things like _home_ and _safe_ and _family_ and _adventure_ when he thought of the Mystery Shack. He was meant to think of Mabel ( _sister, best friend, trust, love, yes, worthy, important_ ) and Stanley (grunkle, authority, love, strong, protection) and Soos ( _honest, friend, love, good, funny_ ).

Sometimes he remembered others. If he'd wandered away from the core of the realm and he concentrated on the Mystery Shack. Then he remembered Wendy ( _friend, chance, love, cool, attractive, badarse_ ) and Stanford ( _grunkle, author, love, wow, curiosity_ ). Sometimes he remembered others like _enemy-short-mean-_ Gideon or _stuck-up-enemy-rich-_ Pacifica or _kooky-smart-friend-_ McGucket, but they were all far less staple.

He was concerned. Despite having an apparently reliable way of recalling people, he found he still had blanks. He had parents, he knew, but he could remember them. He only knew he had them because when he remembered things like love and family from Mabel or Stanley, he remembered that there were other people who he associated with that. But the associations weren't strong enough to recall the people or the names as well. Or maybe he'd never known there names.

But that was how things worked here - it was similar to the Dreamscape in that regard. It was shaped by thought and emotions and concepts rather than anything physical like geography or physics. But where the Dreamscape was shaped by primarily human ideas and emotions, the Nightmare Realm was fuelled by the ideas and so-called emotions of various demons. He knew that things would be different when he left this realm. He wasn't sure if he'd known first or if the realm had told him first, but he knew it. Once he was somewhere else, he would have a better idea of how to recall memories and piece things together.

It was becoming harder to repeat his name - he was Dipper Pines, twin to Mabel Pines. It came out wrong, sometimes. He was Dipper Pine Tree. He was Pines Tree. He was twin to Shooting Star. He was twin to Mabel Pines and Mabel Pines' twin was named Dipper Pines. These weren't the right was to recall who he was, he knew. But it was hard, in this realm, to recall the human's English words and string them together into a sentence. It was easier to see or feel or taste or smell the thought, the concept that he was making. A pine tree orbiting around a shooting star which, in turn, orbited around the pine tree. They moved in synchronised motions in a shape more complicated than a double helix, like they were moving and staying still and both of them where the centre and both where the orbiting piece. It hurt his human thoughts to think about it - it made sense to the rest of him, though.

There was a blinding light that let him see perfectly. He looked into it, tasting more ideas. An opening - a cut in the fabric of the realm. Someone was chanting for him; _Pine Tree_ , _Pine Tree_ , _Pine Tree_. He felt the raw power that pulled him. Someone was killing him. Someone was feeding him. Someone was hurting him. Someone was healing him. The realm was made of carbon. The person was made of water. It was painful. It was pleasurable. It was distressing ecstasy and ecstatic distress and-

There was a vessel in the opening. An opening in an opening. The vessel was splayed open - flesh open, soul open and, most importantly, mind open. Others rushed for it, rushing to leave the Nightmare Realm, rushing to take the vessel.

Idiots.

Couldn't they tell?

The vessel had offered itself to Pine Tree.

He went to the opening, no faster than any of the others but more efficiently. They had to fight, tearing each other apart to get a chance to enter. The opening was improper for any of them and they all faced resistance. Except for him. The opening was just perfect for him.

He entered.

* * *

Mabel watched as her grunkle sunk to the floor, his hand pressed into the barrier as if he could pass through if he could just push hard enough. Tears gently rolled down her face as she watched the display. She didn't know what had happened, what had gone wrong. First Grunkle Ford was drawing the circle and then next thing she knew he was trapped, passed out and her other grunkle was desperately banging on the magic keeping them from him.

She hadn't moved forward, rooted to the spot with distress and fear. Bill next to her was calling out in a weak voice, telling Stan that it wouldn't work, that his bare fists couldn't effect the magic. She was filled with the damning thought that this was all her fault. It had been she who suggested switching Dipper and Bill's symbols on this Wheel. She shouldn't have said anything. She should've let the more experienced people figure out what to do. This was turning into just as much of a mess as her made-up ritual was. It technically had worked but it hadn't done what she'd wanted - not at all.

Through her wet eyes, she saw Stan's head suddenly look up, staring at the slumped body in the circle. The body which wasn't so slumped and which was, in fact, sitting up before their very eyes. Stan suddenly fell forward as a shimmer of navy blue ran over the invisible bubble, disappating it. In the circle, Ford's body gingerly stood.

"Grunkle Stan?" he said, probably not for the first time.

The reply was tinted with a confused tone; "Ford?"

"What?" his face frowned in a familiar expression - but not an expression she found familiar on Ford's features. It wasn't until she noticed the slight movement at one corner of his mouth that it clicked why the expression was so familiar. Mabel wasted no time in dashing forward and flung herself into his arms.

"Dipper!"

Ford - Dipper - Fordipper? - Ford-Dipper - automatically caught her and, after the briefest of moments he hugged her tightly back with an exclamation of his own;

"Mabel!"

The two twins remained squished together like that for a long moment, until Mabel felt her circulation go strange and she said;

"Not that I'm not loving this, bro-bro, but I think I need to be on solid ground again. You're taller than me like that!"

"Oh!" Dipper seemed to snap back to reality, "Right, yeah." and he carefully dropped her back to the floor.

She had barely touched the ground before she gave him a friendly punch to his upper thigh, teasing; "You're only taller because you're possessing Grunkle Ford, don't forget who's the alpha twin around here."

Instead of inspiring laughter, which had been her aim, Dipper stumbled back and stared down at his two borrowed hands. It looked as if he'd only just consciously realised what was going on. He made a distressed sound, a weird noise to be coming from Ford's throat, and looked back up at her.

"I should go. I should stop."

"No!" she shouted, a little surprised when Grunkle Stan next to her joined her shout. He stood from where he'd been kneeling and stepped towards Dipper, his hand twitching as if he wanted to reach out but was too afraid.

"Dipper, this is the closest we've gotten to getting you back. Ford's been wracking his oversized brain to figure out how to get you-"

Dipper cut him off; "Then he can think of another way to do it. He wouldn't want this, trust me."

"Listen." Came Stan's firm voice, "He'd be more upset knowing it worked and that you ran off back to where ever you where trapped. This only worked because your sister helped. If they hadn't been working together, then even this would've failed."

She thought it unwise to interrupt, but Mabel couldn't help but silently attribute some credit to Grunkle Stan, too. She'd only had her leap of knowledge when he'd pointed out about Bill being in the centre. He hadn't had a conclusion but he'd been necessary for the brainstorming.

"You have to stay, Dipper. We'll work something out. But if you go - we might not get you back."

This seemed to give Ford-Dipper pause. He pressed his lips together and there was a slight movement in the corner of his mouth again - trying to chew a pen when he had none available. After a tense moment he stopped and nodded.

"You'll stay?" Stan asked, but she knew before Ford-Dipper answered that that wasn't why he'd nodded.

As she predicted, he shook his head.

"No, I can't."

Stan looked ready to angrily make some retort, but Dipper hurried on.

"But I **can** give you a way to summon me. It will work." he looked down at her as he added, "Guaranteed."

He went silent, as if expecting Stan or Mabel to disagree again and beg him to stay. Neither protested. Ford-Dipper gave a small nod, as if to himself, and then said;

"I'll write it down. Does anyone- Oh, right, no, wait." He shoved his borrowed hands into Ford's coat pockets and eventually emerged with a pen and notepad. He spent a few quite moments scrawling something, flipping the notepad's pages twice before he was done. He looked up at them when he was done.

"You can use this to summon me again." he cast about for a moment before making an expression which she recognised as his _Doh-Of-Course!_ -expression and he tucked the notepad and pen back into one of Ford's pockets. "It's called a Septagram Nightmare Circle an-"

"No!" Stan cut in, his hard refusal creeping back into his expression, "Ford already tried that, it doesn't work."

Dipper looked lost and somewhat stunned at this revelation. He glanced at the pocket with the notepad and said in a quieter tone;

"It works. It can summon me."

"I'm telling you - it didn't work. Either you gotta find some other way or just stay here. We'll figure out the... body snatching thing later. Ford won't mind - not if we get you back."

Dipper's voice rose in pitch, firmness returning to it and his grunkle's stretched vocal cords adding a solemn timbre to his words.

"He will mind. I can't stay in here. The Nightmare Circle works - it definitely works. I **know** what I'm talking about."

Mabel found herself looking between her brother and one of her grunkles. She felt a familiar tear in loyalty, but in reverse. Dipper needed them to believe him even though that had no way to double check that he was right and Stan didn't want to take that chance. The very real chance that it would all go wrong. It reminded her of when the portal had opened and she'd been the only one able to get to it's shut-down button. She wondered if they even realised how similar they were.

From behind them, a calm yet high voice spoke.

"I'd take his word on that, Stanley."

The three shifted so that they could stare at Bill Cipher.

 

* * *

He idly wondered how Sixer was fairing while Dipper possessed him. He doubted the man - or rather his psyche - was doing too well.

Through some magical sense of priority, Bill thankfully retained almost all of his memories of what had happened to him since he'd been summoned to Gravity Falls. The details weren't quite as clear - especially for memories that had taken place in the Dreamscape or Nightmare Realm (which had been most of them) but he could still recall every main event that had occurred. There was a lot of knowledge hidden in those memories that slipped from his grasp. Concepts that even Stanford had never comprehended because they were the demonic equivalent to physics. Knowledge like that had faded from Bill's new human memory. But he did remember all the manipulative words he'd said to Sixer and he did remember how they'd treated each other.

What he was specifically recalling now, was when Stanford had first agreed to let Bill possess him.

Ford had had the typical human wariness to being possessed. Even though he thought Bill was a muse, the idea of 'possession' was not a nice one. It had too many negative connotations. But Bill had softly talked him into it. That first possession had been very hard on Bill. Being in the third dimension again had been so exhilarating - he' wanted to through himself down stairs, gorge himself on food and drink and maybe things that weren't strictly food. He'd wanted to stick a fork in an electrical socket. Instead he'd had to be careful - he couldn't act on almost any of his impulses, lest he scare Ford off in such an early stage of his plan.

The first many possessions had gone similarly. Bill knew how to be patient and knew how to make humans trust him. Later was a whole different story. Once the portal had reached completion and the two humans building it had moved on to test runs, he knew that his secret's lifespan was coming close to expiring. So he'd decided to have some fun, now that Stanford was a lot less useful. He'd let slip - by 'accident' - intimate things he'd discovered about Ford from being in his mind and body so often. Things that unnerved his pet human and things that disturbed him from quiet moments.

Once Ford had vowed to stop the project, had hidden his Journals and had sent his assistant away, Bill had moved onto out right terrorising him. Their deal to let Bill enter his mind at will, in exchange for help on the portal project, was still very much valid. There was no way for Ford to void it without taking drastic measures. He had forced his way into the man's head and body, making the process of possession as unpleasant and as painful as he could and finally venting some of his impulses; pain and risks he'd wanted to put Ford's physical body through. Things he could do without consequence, now that Ford didn't trust him anyway. Well, without consequence for him, anyway.

But Bill knew humans bore more than external consequences for their actions. He doubted Ford's mind and emotions got away from the forcible possessions unscathed. He very much doubted that Stanford was having a nice time while possessed, even if Pine Tree was making it as painless as possible.

He saw no need to speak as the three Pines spoke amongst themselves. He already had a strong suspicion on how this would end. Dipper - he now knew via an educated guess - knew something of his past with Ford. So he would refuse to remain possessing Ford's body. But he wouldn't leave his family so distressed. He'd give them a summoning ritual to use and then he could leave, safe in knowing they had a way to find him again and that it wouldn't result in a possession again.

As he'd predicted, Dipper produced a notepad and wrote them out a summoning ritual. Then he made the mistake of naming it. The trio looked ready to start arguing again. But Bill had decided this had gone on for long enough. They had what they needed now and he felt a lot better knowing it was, in fact, possible to summon his inter-dimensional counterpart to their own realm.

"I'd take his word on that, Stanley."

All three moved to look at him. He raised a hand and picked at his nails by the gloomy basement light, not deigning to look at them.

"If his mind was upgraded at least as much as mine was downgraded - and I'm betting it was - then he knows lots of things now. And every demon instinctively knows every method of how to summon themselves. That ritual he wrote down will be the real deal."

"And why should we take your word for it? Why would we trust you?" Stan asked in a hard and accusing voice.

Bill looked up at him from his hands. He gave Stan an unimpressed look, the expression possibly not visible through the gloom on his dark face.

"I am relying on us being able to contact Dipper so I can switch places with him again and go back to being my usual Dream Demon self. You do remember that, right Fez-Head? If we loose Dipper again then I loose my chance of turning back into a demon."

Stan opened his mouth to retort, so Bill pushed on, not letting him get a word in edgewise.

"But that's beside the point. The point is that you don't have to trust me. I didn't write the ritual, I just gave an opinion. **He** ," Bill gestured at Ford-Dipper, "Wrote the ritual. You have to trust **him**."

Stanley looked between him and Dipper a number of times, clearly unsure on what to do. His flicking gaze halted part way through turning from one to the other - it halted on Mabel's small form. They shared a look that Bill couldn't see and Mabel's voice quietly echoed through the vast room.

"I trust him, Grunkle Stan."

Stan looked at her for a moment longer, before giving a firm nod.

"Okay," he said as he turned back to Ford-Dipper, "Then we'll see you soon. Go."

Dipper gave them a small smile and sat down in the middle circle. He shut his eyes and, after a second, Ford's body slumped in relaxation. A few seconds after, Ford's eyes where fluttering open of their own accord. The Pines celebrated the small victory and filled their once-possessed relative in on what had happened.

Bill didn't participate, instead staring at the air as if he could see the senseless things he'd felt. He'd felt the world shift as Dipper had left. And for a second, he thought he'd felt a lick of the Nightmare Realm itself. He'd felt his home realm caress him.

And it had terrified him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not expect this ritual to take an entire chapter. But it did.
> 
> You can thank Phantomspirit for this - their comment spurred me on to get started on the next chapter and once I got started... well it didn't take long for me to get finished.
> 
> So we get a hint at what Dipper's been up to and hope that he'll return in a more reliable fashion soon. We also get some interesting insights into Bill's state of mind.
> 
> Fun Fact: the possession of Ford was not planned until it happened. I decided on that route in the moment and it worked well enough that it stuck.


	10. Good Morning

The next time they tried summoning Dipper was a lot less painful for everyone involved.

Grunkle Stan had insisted that everyone get some sleep - looking specifically at her and Ford as he'd said it. He'd mentioned something about it being a taxing evening, but Mabel was honestly happy to be ordered around a little. Ford had put up a bit more of a fight, but they'd told him which pocket Dipper had put the new summoning ritual in and, after he'd glanced it over, the fight had left him and he'd agreed.

Mabel just wished he hadn't looked so twitchy as they all filed back up above ground.

The next morning had had a surreal quality to it. It had been like nothing changed, like they hadn't reconnected with Dipper, like Grunkle Ford hadn't been possessed, but like nothing was even wrong. The surreality was only enhanced when they'd all heard Soos enter the Shack, arriving at the start of his work day. After breakfast they'd risen almost as one. Mabel had given her Grunkle's firm looks and had told them in no uncertain terms;

"Don't start without me."

Before she'd taken Bill's hand and gone out into the gift shop to collect Soos. He was close enough to family to be a part of this.

Their group of five had gone downstairs once more, but just to the lab, this time. Soos played errand-boy as her two Grunkle's set the whole thing up. She noticed that this time it was Grunkle Stan standing closest to the circle they'd made with candles, and he read words off of a piece of paper as the light flickered eerily.

Mabel felt her eyes go heavy and then the world bleed free of colour. There was a small star burst in the middle of the ring of candles and then a series of bright flashes that left her blinking in the dim light, trying to clear her vision. When she opened her eyes, she saw her brother.

He was exactly as she remembered him. From his clothes to his hat to his brown floppy hair to his noodly limbs. Some part of her sagged with relief that he still looked so incredibly human, aside from an ambient glow around his edges, highlighting that he was more like a moving picture than a three-dimensional model.

She wasn't estatic this time. She had been nervous, harbouring deeply buried worries that the ritual might just not work. She knew it wasn't beyond her brother to lie if he thought it was serving a greater good but she still doubted he'd lie to **her** , even for the best of reasons. But all the guilty and worry and fear that had built up in her since Dipper had disappeared from her side, replaced with Bill of all creatures, all of that had released last night when she'd realised they Dipper had possessed their grunkle. Instead of rushing forward for a hug, this time she just cheerily said;

"Morning Dipper."

* * *

Dipper was not entirely sure that was an appropriate greeting. He'd been away from this realm for so long, it felt. Even now, he knew he wasn't really **here** \- he'd felt the ritual take form from the Nightmare Realm and had travelled into the Dream Realm to help complete it. The state they were in now was a limbo state - enough of a dream that he could exist but enough of reality that they weren't pulled from their realm.

He guessed that his sister had just already gotten most or all of her feelings out when they'd summoned him before. When had that been, last week? No, that didn't make any sense. He could tell they had waited, he knew time had passed, but he couldn't figure out how to gauge how long it had been.

_No, you can do this, be smart about this, Dipper._

It was the next morning. Someone had pointed out that they'd all had a big night and they'd gone to sleep. But they were too invested in this to put it off for long. It was the day after, probably the morning. He felt better knowing that, somehow.

"Uh... Dip-dop? Can you speak?"

He turned not by moving his feet or his torso but by his whole body just rotating around until he was facing her more directly. It took him a moment to recalibrate his brain, to repair all the connections it used to have and to remember how he was meant to respond and how he was meant to form that proper response.

He smiled, after a fashion, before returning the greeting.

"Hey Mabel." he rotated a little and looked at everyone else, "Hey everyone. Um, thanks for summoning me again."

Soos said something amiable, something reassuring, but his attention had fallen on an unfamiliar face. He paused after Soos had finished speaking, checking to see if anyone expected a response, before launching in on his new topic.

"No offence but, who are you?"

* * *

He was finding it rather peculiar, being in Limbo despite not being the one who'd caused the Limbo Zone. It felt familiar and alien at the same time - like half his senses remembered it and the other half couldn't process it. He found himself looking around the Zone instead of at the apparition they'd summoned. He didn't really see why he had to look at Pine Tree, anyway. He knew he was there - it's not like the kid was going to lie to his own family. Especially not when he definitely had at least one working summoning ritual to give them.

But aside from being so sure that the ritual had worked, Bill had another reason for appearing disinterested. He'd seen the other four blinking awkwardly after Dipper had materialised and he suspected that meant they'd missed the flashes in-between the apparently blinding light. They'd missed Dipper flashing between aesthetic forms, they'd missed that moment where he'd tried to translate himself from the dimensions of the Nightmare Realm into the mere two dimensions of Limbo. He figured it was smart to keep that information to himself, at least until he found a more optimal time to share it.

But soon enough, he felt a heavy gaze land on him.

"No offence but, who are you?"

"Oh, oh, ow! Pine Tree that hurts! We've been through so much together! We-"

Dipper didn't let him finish his drama.

"Oh, right, Bill. You were there last- time, weren't you. I was kinda distracted." an unkind grin tugged at the demon boy's face, "Hey yeah, you're a human now, right? How're you enjoying humanity, Bill? Is it exactly as gross and lame as you suspected or is it worse?"

Bill scrunched his lips closed and crossed his arms. Other people having all the knowledge was no fun. Dipper's grin only increased, fading only when he turned his attention away and looked around the room.

"So... what now?" the demon boy asked.

It occurred to Bill that that was a surprisingly good question. It should've been a ridiculous question. The next step should've been just switching them back but in all the rush to get Dipper back, he realised Ford hadn't actually hinted that he'd started work on any method to fix their situation. It annoyed him on a deep level that he'd gotten caught up in the emotions of the Pines' family - he hadn't been able to keep his priorities straight when they'd all been so high-strung about Dipper. Sure, resummoning him was a priority but it shouldn't have been Bill's sole priority. Had becoming human stripped his multi-tasking skills away as well? He supposed that would explain why humans were often so single minded.

He turned to look at Stanford, noting in the corners of his eyes as most other eyes turned in the same direction. They were wondering what he was wondering - he didn't need his lost ability to see into minds to know that.

* * *

Mabel looked between her grunkle and her brother, flicking her eyes between them. This was the closest they'd gotten to fixing what she'd done but she hadn't really been looking further ahead than this point. They had Dipper back in a certain capacity and that was enough to sate her. But... they should do something about this - especially before Summer ended. She had a feeling this stop-gap measure wasn't going to cut it back in Oregon. Grunkle Ford didn't seem to have anything forth coming, however. Was he as clueless as the rest of them in how to proceed. She suspected so, as when he spoke it was in a ginger tone;

"I'll need some time to reverse engineer what happened and form a new switching ritual. Until then, we should find a way to keep Dipper anchored in our realm instead of-" he looked up at her brother's apparition and her brow creased at the expression they shared, "Instead of elsewhere."

There was something more to that, but it would only distract to ask about it now. She'd ask Dipper later. Instead she asked;

"Can't we just keep this ritual going? I mean, Dipper's here, right?"

"No." both Dipper and Ford said in unison.

They gave each other a comical double look before Ford seemed to concede the floor to Dipper, who explained;

"This isn't properly in yo- **our** realm. It's kinda a fusion between the Dreamscape and Earth. Uh, it's a little hard to explain..."

"Oh!" she piped up "A fusion - like my Fuze Pens, right?"

Dipper's face twisted with confusion for the barest moment before clearing in bright understanding.

"Yeah, exactly! You twist the two together - two textas, two realms - and they bleed into each other. But like with the Fuze Pens, it only lasts for so long, and only in a certain area. This ritual," he gestured around himself, "Only covers a few feet in radius. And none of you can move properly beyond the ritual's area. I mean, well, I can't either, but that's different."

"Wait, wait," she'd only had a moment or two to understand all that before Grunkle Stan started talking, "Can we just back it up for a second?" he turned and faced his brother, "Why do we need some whole new ritual to switch them? Mabel had a perfectly functional ritual that switches them. Why can't we just do that again?"

She thought Ford looked kind of annoyed as he answered;

"Mabel's ritual was experimental at best, Stanley. Not only was it pieced together from other rituals but it included a rather flawed translation of it's transcription. It might switch them back to who they were. Or it might switch their locations, this time. Or it might switch some other part of them. It's not a stable ritual and there's no telling what the outcome might be if we use it a second time."

Grunkle Stan didn't look like he found that acceptable, but he was staying quiet at least. Ford continued in a more reasonable tone, speaking to them in general.

"I will be using it as my basis, however. Which reminds me - Mabel I'll need a copy of what other rituals you pieced your ritual together from."

Her face widened in panic and she faltering started to reply; "Uh, well, sure! But it's, um-!"

He seemed to understand as he made a placating gesture with one hand; "To the best of your memory, I'll need to see copies of the other rituals. Don't worry yourself if you can't find them again, I probably won't even actually need them."

There was a lull once more as that topic left the forefront of their minds and they returned to thinking on how they could keep Dipper in their realm for an extended amount of time. They each fidgeted - Dipper drumming his fingers on his thigh, Grunkle Stan fiddle with his shirt cuffs, Soos making loud sounds of contemplation. Mabel mostly found herself annoyed that she didn't know too much about phenomena like this. Pretty much all her knowledge on the supernatural and otherwise weird had been gained from Dipper. Either it was second-hand knowledge or it was knowledge gained from being by his side. But she'd never sought out the knowledge, not really. She couldn't remember if she'd ever even really held any of the Journals, except for that one time that she'd taken one for her ill-fated sock puppet play.

She spoke her thoughts out loud, hoping that hearing the words would spur her own or other's thoughts.

"So we need to find a way to keep Dipper in this realm but it needs to be more permanent than just fusing the two realms like this."

Grunkle Stan picked up her train of thought, "So what are all the ways he can be in our realm, even just sorta here like he is now?"

Predictably it was Grunkle Ford who told them; "Various forms of dreams, primarily. Fusing the Dreamscape with out realm, casting a spectre of himself into our daydreams, sharing our minds while we enter a R.E.M. dream. Mingling the Dreamscape with our realm is the safest method for everyone, though especially safest for us."

"So," Soos started, stroking his chin with a suspiciously thoughtful expression, "You are saying we need to be having a dream, all the time, to see Dipper. We just need to learn how to sleep-walk. And sleep-talk. And sleep-eat. And just sleep-live in general."

"Uh, Soos, no offence-" Dipper started, but he was quickly cut off by Grunkle Ford.

"Yes, of course! We need to remain in a waking sleep. If we can activate the parts of our minds that are active when we dream while we're still awake, then Dipper will be able to remain here! We'll be able to see him and, hm, yes, I may even be able to give him some limited control over his surroundings... Hm.. yes... If I just adjust the mul... then... hmmm."

He trailed off, clearly becoming lost in thought.

"Whelp!" Grunkle Stan took over, "He clearly has some idea of how to fix this. We should leave him to it. Come on, don't think I've forgotten that this is a work day. Just because Dipper's back don't think I'm giving anyone time off. If I did that you'd all just 'mysteriously dissappear' whenever you wanted to give everyone a day off." he clapped Ford on the shoulder as he walked passed him - his brother didn't seem to notice, still muttering calculations under his breath, "Let us know if you need anything, Sixer."

Ford nodded absently, raising his voice momentarily to inform them; "Yes, yes, just raise the stones by a fraction and they should..." before trailing off again.

Mabel lingered behind, watching Dipper. He gave her a reassuring smile that looked sadder than she suspected he meant it to look.

"Don't worry," he told her, "He'll figure it out. I think I have some idea of what he's talking about. I'll be back before you know it."

Her own reassuring smile was certainly sadder than she wanted it to be. Even knowing he'd be back in not too long, it hurt to walk away from her brother like this.

"Okay." was the only reply she could manage.

"But, um." he glanced between her and Ford, "If he hasn't figured it out by, uh, say next meal time, maybe tell him to summon me again so I can give a bit of assistance?"

His words made logical sense, but she could always see the emotions hidden inbetween his lines. He wanted her to make sure he was resummoned - so that he could assist and so that they could be reunited after not too long.

"Will do, bro." she said with a warmer smile, this time.

* * *

Stanford felt it was good to be truly working on something again.

That wasn't to say he hadn't spent the passed week or however long 'working on' something. But it wasn't the same. That had been a project with a lofty goal and his aim had been to find a solution as much as it was to make that solution had it. The situation had spiralled further out of control with his grand niece's interference. It was nice to finally be working on a project that he knew he could complete, knew how to complete and knew he could complete in record time.

It was good to be working on something again, left to his own devices in his lab with his mind full of productive thoughts. It was a lot better than being in that crowd of people. It was a lot better than being alone. It was leagues better than being asleep.

He hadn't slept well, last night. Old trauma had been stirred up like silt in a disturbed riverbed. It clouded his thoughts in his waking hours, making him paranoid about the people around him and making him paranoid about his very surroundings while he was alone. Sleeping had been the worst, of course.

He was reasonably certain, logically, that Dipper hadn't actually visited his dreams. If Dipper had been going to visit anyone's dreams, it would be Mabel's. Not just because he was sure that's who Dipper would consciously want to visit the most, but because they had far more of a metaphysical bond than he and Stanley had. Dipper would be unconsciously drawn to Mabel before he was drawn to Ford. But nonetheless, his dreams had had a disturbing quality to them.

His dreams had flicked between memories of trauma past, worries and guilt and blame of the present and hallucinations of the future. He'd vividly relived some of Bill's rougher possessions, as well as the earlier gentle, almost tender, possessions. He'd heard Bill's old words. Soft encouragement and compliments and flattery that had all gone straight to his head. His dreams had spiralled in cruel ways, imaging his family turning on him, betraying him. Stanley standing above him and laughing as his lab fell apart around him. Mabel and Dipper staring at him with cruel accusations. The symbols of Cipher's wheel had spun through his eyes, mocking and taunting him. And the entire nightmare had ended with some mistake that he'd missed and with the agonising pressure that he'd somehow ruined everything, ruined the entire world. And then a soft whisper in a voice too much like Bill Cipher's and too much like Dipper Pines' had told him that he was far, far too insignificant to have done anything on such a grand scale.

He'd thankfully woken up at that point and had found that only three hours had passed. He hadn't gotten to sleep at a reasonable hour in the first place and those measly few hours only made it about five in the morning.

Putting on a mask that appear social had been rather draining, but he knew he had to weather being around people for that morning. No one in the house would let him put off resummoning Dipper. He was almost surprised Stanley had insisted they all get some sleep before trying again, but then again Stanley had always had more self-preservation than he'd had. So he'd had to funnel some extra-caffeinated tea into himself and had to lead them back into his space, his lab and then thankfully Stanley had sidled up to him and asked if he could do the summoning, instead of Ford doing it.

But he was thankful that they were gone, now. And he was thankful that he wasn't alone with his stray thoughts, but rather alone with his thoughts set on the task of setting up the Waking Sleep circle. Once he had the instructions sorted and laid out, he went in search of help. That handyman would be useful, probably. He took a shovel as he went to find Soos.

* * *

Mabel watched the kitchen clock as it ticked closer to two o'clock. She'd been putting off lunch in hopes that Ford would return from... where ever he and Soos had ventured and would up date her on what was happening. She was meant to tell Ford to summon Dipper by lunch time but it was almost passed a reasonable lunch hour and she wasn't sure where Ford was.

Bill, half laying on top of the table, and his whining about starving to death was not really helping matters.

"Oh phoey. You can't starve to death in a few hours."

"These human bodies are incredibly frail! Didn't you tell me one has to sleep **every** night?"

"That's different! Besides, we're not **skipping** lunch. We're just... delaying it."

"Delaying it until Stanford tells us about Pine Tree."

"Shhh!" she wildly gesticulated at him as she spied Ford and Soos through a window.

She hopped up and followed their silhouette's around the Shack until she met them face to face at a door. She grinned almost too broadly.Ford only frowned a little, but Soos gave her a broad grin back.

"Heya hambone. Ford here says this things ready to fire up - ready to get Dipper back and solid?"

Her too-large grin relaxed into a more natural wide grin. She was so ready to get Dipper back.

"I should just need to summon him again, then you'll have to give us a moment while we dismiss the circle without banishing him. Should take half an hour, maximum."

Mabel happily nodded then made a strange wiggly motion of hesitation before launching herself at Ford. Her grunkle held his arms out more in surprise than anything else but she took the opportunity to hug him tightly anyway. In his ear, she murmured;

"Thank you so, so much, Grunkle Ford."

She released him soon after and skipped back to the kitchen, making lunch for three.

An hour later, there was one empty plate and two full ones around the kitchen table, and Bill was impatiently tapping the blunt end of a fork onto the table. Mabel knew some measure of how he felt. She wanted to make some kind of repetitive motion to keep her mind off of things but she didn't want to make any more noise in case she... missed something. A piece of hair found it's way into her mouth, an old but now irregular nervous habit resurfacing.

From her side, someone asked;

"What's wrong, Mabel?"

There was a sudden screech of a chair scratching against the floor from the opposite side of her. She remained glumly looking at her food.

"Ford said he'd be done summoning Dipper ages ago but he's not here yet."

"Oh yeah? Wow, that sucks." the tone was almost amused.

"It more than sucks!" she slammed a hand down and looked at her conversationalist, blurting out; "It's-!"

She got no further than that before she actually took in what she was seeing in. Opposite her was Bill who was sitting in his chair, which had been pushed a far way back from the table, looking a little too casual. To her side, was Dipper, looking far too smug at the ruse he'd just pulled.

"You-!" she stuttered, "You-! You butt! You absolute buttface!"

And then she flopped back into her seat and laughed hysterically a little. Once she'd calmed down, she looked back up at him with a smile. But it drifted off her face as she asked the hard question.

"So... so this." her voice was soft, "This is permanent? Until we can fix you and Bill fully? You're not going to fade away or disappear again or, or anything?"

Dipper shook his head. "This waking sleep thing has a perimeter. Everyone who enters will be able to see me and he's added some, uh, anchoring measures? So that things I touch will be effected properly. I just can't leave the perimeter."

"Or no one would be able to see you." piped up Bill, still sitting too casually in his chair. She suspected he'd been caught off-guard when Dipper had made his appearance.

Dipper shook his head at the statement. "No - the Waking Sleep circle counts as a warding circle. I literally can't leave - not into yo- **our** realm, anyway."

He concentrated on Mabel again, their eyes meeting across the table. "This is permanent. I'm not going anywhere."

The twins smiled at each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now the fun begins...
> 
> ;)


	11. The Routine As Usual

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dedicate this chapter and it's completion to billdip-paradise-blog's 30 Day Challenge. Day 10 was Switching Clothes or Forms so... obviously I add to add a chapter :3
> 
> I'm somewhat more invigorated for this story, too, so hopefully I'll get some more chapters out. Maybe not over the Holiday break, though

Dipper was somehow unsurprised when Stan burst into their room in the morning, calling them all lazy and good-for-nothing and telling them to get down to the Gift Shop for morning muster. He spared a moment to smile at the slanted ceiling of his bedroom - it was good to be back in Gravity Falls.

"Dipper~ Come on!"

He waved at the side of his head, as if fending off a fly or dismissing an idea, and got up out of bed. It was more cramped than usual in the attic bedroom. According to Mabel, they were on 'Bill watching' duty until further notice. Dipper had agreed with this sentiment, essentially, as it could only benefit them to keep an eye on the ex-demon. But on the other hand they'd had to rearrange the sleeping arrangements. Dipper got his bed back, only having to mush his pillow a little bit so as to get it back to the shape he liked. Mabel got her bed back, too, which had left Bill demanding that he have something more solid than a sleeping bag if he was going to sleep on the floor. Even when one bed was actually just a couple of couch cushions on the floor held together with a fitted sheet, having three beds in the one small room made the place considerably more crowded than usual. Add the three of them scrambling around to get dressed and otherwise ready for the day just made it even worse.

And then there was the fact that Bill didn't technically own any clothes. Dipper held up an errant sock.

"Has he been wearing my **socks**?"

"I've been wearing Mabel's too! It's fair!"

"I had to give him something!"

"Give him your clothes!"

"I did! He borrowed **both** of our clothes!"

"Even Shooting Star's hideous sweaters."

Dipper turned to glare an unimpressed look at him while Mabel advanced on Bill, something purple in her hand. A moment later Bill was wearing Mabel's Meow-Wow sweater. She patted him on the cheek.

"You **lurve** them~"

Dipper marvelled silently as Bill rolled his eyes instead of biting back some kind of retort. He looked almost... affectionate? He was surely imagining things. Or Bill was trying to play nice to lull them into a false sense of security. He brushed down his vest, subtly making sure everything he'd need was hidden inside.

For once he beat Mabel to get first inside the bathroom and freshened up before waiting on the stairs for the other two to come down. Grunkle Stan shouted from down below - something about docking everyone's pay - and to Dipper's vague delight he heard the Shack door's bell ring and Wendy retorting that he didn't pay his child labourers anyway. With Mabel apparently coaxing Bill out of the bathroom, he decided to head downstairs on his own. He'd only seen his family - and Bill - yesterday. Even Soos had had to go home before he could say hi. He wanted to see the others.

"Dipper! Yo! Look at you!" Wendy introduced him to the room from her spot behind the counter. She quickly vacated, coming to get a closer look at him.

Soos had a similar reaction, "Dawg, aw yes, it worked! Oh dude it is so good to see you again."

Soos looked seconds away from wrapping him up in a bear hug, but Wendy beat him to contact by aiming a playful punch at his upper arm. He didn't even think to mutter a pained exclamation before Soos had scooped him up. He returned the affection enthusiastically. Once he was realised to ground level, again, he saw Soos gesturing eagerly at him to someone at the gift shop's entrance. Mabel and Bill had finally made it downstairs.

"Okay, okay, bonding time's over. Time to put in some proper work." Stan visibly hesitated, before rubbing the back of his neck and looking anywhere but at them as he said, "Uh, today's probably gonna be a slow day. So you three can have the afternoon off, okay?"

"But Mister Pines, didn't you say-?"

Wendy cut off Soos' innocent retort with a swift elbow to his side. He looked over at her and then looked back at them with a dawning look of realisation. In a poorly acted tone, he ammended;

"I mean - yeah dudes, totally quiet. Not gonna be mad busy at all or nothing. Just like Mister Pines said."

"Thanks Soos. Now go fix something where no one can hear you." Stan ordered, deadpan. "And what are you lot doing still standing around. You've still got this **morning** to work!"

Soos gave a serious looking salute, then marched out with his toolbox. Wendy gave a far more sloppy salute and headed back to her post and the three kids headed to their own petty jobs.

* * *

The three children-apparent lay on the floor of the TV room. Mabel was bouncing a ball off of the various surfaces and Bill avoided an ill-placed richoette with a practised dodge. Dipper was just glad that her errant chaos had, for once, someone else to inflict collateral damage on.

"This is boring."

There was something off-putting about laying on the floor. He was trying not to think about it, trying to slip back into that easy 'thing' he had with his twin.

"No it's not - just watch the ball! Bounce-bounce-bounce-bounce!"

But then again, there was Bill. Bill Cipher, as human as he might claim to be, but Cipher nonetheless. He liked to think that's what was throwing him off. Like it was just the extra person that was stopping him from falling in sync with his sister. It had been strange, no doubt, when they'd been dismissed from work and Mabel had lead them into the TV room and Bill had just automatically followed them. Stranger still in how much Mabel obviously expected him to follow.

The two of them had formed some kind of rapport between them and Dipper had missed out on it's creation. We waved his hand over his face, trying to physically push away the thought before he remembered that thoughts weren't physical in this realm. He turned his head a touch to see Bill giving him a funny look. He scowled and went back to watching Mabel's light-up glitter ball.

The plan had not actually been to waste the afternoon laying around. But they're soon figured out that, with the Waking Sleep Circle doubling as a warding circle, they were kind of limited in what they could do. They couldn't explore the woods any more, because Dipper couldn't leave the house. They could go out into the yard around the house, but it was raining. They couldn't go pester Grunkle Ford, because he was still working on how to switch Bill and Dipper back. They couldn't pester Grunkle Stan because he was running tours, covering for them while they had the afternoon off.

Dipper's thoughts where interrupted by the glitter ball suddenly colliding with his face. He snorted, sitting up and rubbing his face while Mabel frantically apologised. He shrugged at her words;

"Don't worry about it."

And she chased after her ball and put it down the edge of the couch for later retrieval. The three of them, now upright, sat for a moment before Mabel tentatively asked;

"Hey Dipper..."

He raised an eyebrow. She shouldn't be so reluctant with him.

"What happened?"

He looked at her properly. She was picking at her sweater, looking down at her lap. She meant what had happened when he switched, of course. For a moment he thought he could taste his own fear and concern, but of course he couldn't in this dimension. Instead he looked away from her and shrugged.

"Not much. I don't really remember it."

From the corner of his eye, he saw Bill's head snap around to look at him. Of course he would know that Dipper had no problem remembering every second in the Nightmare Realm. The Dreamscape too, for that matter. It wasn't easy to put the memories into a third-dimensional language but the memories themselves where still there.

"Do you remember **anything**?"

He shrugged again but followed up a moment later with actual words.

"I was in the Dreamscape, in people's dreams. Then I was somewhere else." he chanced a look back at Mabel, saw her eyes shining like she needed to know. Saw a glimmer in her eyes, reminding him how Good she was. He looked away again. "I don't know. It was nothing."

"Sure Pine Tree, the Nightmare Realm was nothing." Bill sounded bitter, maybe there was a hint of a twisted sort of nostalgia. "Say how many tortured souls did you- Ow!"

Dipper had closed the gap between the two of them almost as soon as Bill had started to speak and interrupted him by giving his arm a firm punch. Bill was left rubbing his upper arm and only belatedly did Dipper look up to see Mabel watching them. She looked confused more than anything and her mouth seemed to move separately from the rest of her as she said;

"Hey lay off, Bill. If Dip-dop doesn't want to talk about it then he doesn't have to."

Dipper retreated back to where he'd been sitting and lay down again. After a pause he remembered to say a thank you to his sister. It felt alien on his tongue.

* * *

They all sat around the lounge room eating dinner that night. Even Grunkle Ford had joined them, citing 'observation'. No one was particularly interested in testing his excuse. Grunkle Stan had control of the remote, flicking from station to station at the slightest provocation.

Dipper was uncomfortable. He really wished he wasn't, but he couldn't deny it. That afternoon had passed with little incident - the three of them eventually managing to entertain each other. But now they were sitting down and doing the domestic thing and Dipper couldn't help but find it uncomfortable. He didn't like sitting directly on the floor, he didn't like sitting upright, he didn't like putting the food and drink into his mouth. It all just felt off. He supposed he'd gotten so used to how the other Realms had operated that he just had to take some time to readjust to this dimension.

Bill, apparently, had already adjusted to this dimension. He seemed to have no trouble sitting down cross-legged on Mabel's other side with his eyes glued to the TV and cutting up his food with practised motions of cutlery. The last time Dipper had seen a fork in Bill's hand the then-demon had been stabbing it into Dipper's own arm, so the sight was rather jarring.

Except, he reminded himself for the umpteenth time that day, he was trying not to remember that time Bill had possessed him. Because the more he thought about Bill's actions that days the more... The more he remembered the Nightmare Realm. And really he should be putting that behind him.

He stabbed his vegetables, not quite cutting them but more using his knife and fork to tear them into edible bits. It was good to be chewing actual human food again, though. Even if it felt weird to put it in his mouth. He was relishing the feeling of grinding and crushing the food between his molars. The chicken was especially delicious tonight even though Grunkle Stan usually cooked it too dry. He was hyperaware of the grease over his fingers and he sunk his digits into the drumstick, tearing bits of meat from the gristle and sinking his incisors in to tear the flesh away.

There was a mocking laugh from behind him and, startled, he looked behind him at Grunkle Stan.

"Now who makes a horrible roast chicken, hey kiddo?" he asked him, clearly teasing and sarcastic.

"Huh?"

"You were 'groaning'!" his sister informed him, "And you had this look that-"

"Okay, okay! I get it. I haven't had proper food in ages, okay? I'm just... enjoying myself."

Grunkle Stan chuckled at him again but the last person he would've guessed came to his defence;

"Mm- chicken is fricking delicious. The real question is what kind of sicko wouldn't groan?" Bill rhetorically questioned the room, sucking on a chicken bone as if to emphasise his point.

With that, the topic was thankfully dropped but Dipper was still mortified. Had he really been **moaning** as he ate? He knew he'd been enjoying the food but to actually moan? That was over the top. That was too much.

And it wasn't his fault it reminded him of a certain meal he'd consumed in the Nightmare Realm.

* * *

Stanford sat down over his notebook at the end of the week. Devising a reverse ritual had been slow-going but that wasn't unexpected. Now that they had Dipper sort-of back he was planning on taking his time. Not that he wanted to delay the switch - one more day with Bill Cipher would be one day too many. But with so many roadblocks he wanted to make sure he got this right the first time around. That meant extensive observation, research and just some practical experiments.

His observations so far had been interesting. He'd known, logically, to expect that Dipper wouldn't be human yet but the implication of that hadn't quite hit him until he'd started his observations. Dipper was certainly making a strong effort to fit back in with the Mystery Shack - Ford supposed he was taking a 'fake it til you make it' stance to being human. He wondered if the boy even noticed when he slipped up.

He didn't slip up much. Even less in that whenever he caught someone looking he immediately corrected himself. But sometimes, mostly when he thought he was alone, he would do things. Like float; his heels pointing towards the roof and not even half a metre above the ground. Or he'd walk straight into something or accidentally hit himself or accidentally stub his toe or some little painful accident and he just wouldn't react. Little accidents that any human would at least flinch at, if not exclaim at and Dipper wouldn't react. Often he seemed to barely seemed to realise what had happened. At worst, Ford caught him flicker a smile, as if there was something good about the shock of pain. But usually it was just no reaction at all.

Most commonly though - to the point where everyone regularly at the Mystery Shack had noticed it - he would make gestures that seemed nonsensical to any human observer. Ford understood what was happening though he'd had to look through his older journals to refresh his memories about it. Dipper was trying to physically interact with metaphysical things. It was something he knew otherworldly entities often did as realms like the Dreamscape or the Nightmare Realm had a very indistinct line between what was physical and what wasn't. Emotions could be physically interacted with, movement could be emoted, taste could be seen, balance could be heard. And, probably subconsciously, Dipper was still clearly trying to function via these rules.

Ford just hoped that those symptoms would clear up on their own after Dipper and Bill were switched back. They could retain him, of course, but with luck it would clear up on it's own.

Nonetheless it would be a good idea for him to sit down with Dipper on his own and encourage the boy to confide in him. As far as he could tell, Dipper hadn't been talking about his experiences so far. He'd thought and hoped that he might at least open up with his own twin - they had such a close relationship after all, something that Ford still found rather alien. But he'd heard Mabel probing Bill with a question or two and she'd come directly to him so as to ask about the Dreamscape and the Nightmare Realm. She'd heard something but Dipper clearly wasn't properly confiding. It would be healthy for him to get that off his chest - to be reassured that any influence lingering from those realms could be corrected.

Just as interestingly had been his observations about Bill.

Bill had continued to show what could only be described as 'symptoms of the human realm'. Pain had been the most contrasting symptom - Ford hadn't been particularly aware of it before but now that he was watching both of them Dipper's lack of reaction just highlighted Bill's reaction to pain. It wasn't overblown or melodramatic but the fact that Bill was regularly experiencing human pain was novel, if nothing else.

Bill had also been learning about human senses like balance. He seemed to run more coherently and he let his limbs hang in a way that would actually be comfortable and natural for a human. His expressions, too, had settled into looks that where more natural for a human face. His grins not as wide, his angry face more in line with any bratty child's expression.

Then there where the symptoms that Ford couldn't be sure whether they were side-effects of Bill being human or if they were Mabel's fantastic influence.

The preference for sugar was definitely Mabel and the surprisingly frequent 'thank you' and 'pleases' where probably her. But the compliments, telling others when they'd done something nice or well? The holding doors open? The insightfulness in which he recommended gifts to the tourists that Stanley fleeced? Ford couldn't even been sure that humanity was inherently good no matter decide if these actions where a side effect of Bill being human or not.

But he still had time. He'd have plenty of time to get this just right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 26.12.2017  
> Wow, the beginning note was optimistic.
> 
> So I'm just officially announcing that this is going on hiatus. I still have the outline for it, still want to finish it, I just haven't had the motivation or the time. Don't hold your breath for any updates, but maybe keep some form of email alert on?


End file.
